


Wildthing

by PropShopHannah



Series: Universe: What happened just after EOS [3]
Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst, Astrys - Freeform, F/M, Sexual Assault, Sexual Trauma, Smut, fenrin - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-31 00:38:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8555824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PropShopHannah/pseuds/PropShopHannah
Summary: (Begins after EoS, during the war.) Fenrys loves anything wild. Naturally, he falls in love with Asterin Blackbeak. Both see themselves as wild beasts that others tried to cage, tame. But Asterin is not looking for a relationship. She sleeps around with weak human men to ease her pain and to punish herself for everything that happened. She still carries the guilt for leaving her hunter and for losing their witchling. Fenrys has to prove to her that he is not going to die and leave her and that if she ever wants a family again, he is ready and willing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This ties into my "The Beloved One" and "It'd Been Three Weeks" stories. They're in a series for "post EOS" works. So if something here happens and then is never explained really, it's because I explained it in one of those stories.

The first time he’d seen the blonde-haired witch, Fenrys had thought her an enemy. She’d flown in out of nowhere on a sky-blue wyvern and had landed on the prow of the ship. Fenrys had been on deck with Gavriel, guarding the captain’s quarters where Rowan was taking care of what was left of Aelin. It’d been a little over a week since they’d rescued her, and his instincts hadn’t given him a chance to think. He’d immediately shifted and attacked the witch.

But she’d been ready.

He’d gone for her throat, but she was quicker than he’d expected, and she’d thrown up her forearm. He’d sunk his fangs into her arm and would have broken the bones had she not released those iron nails and gone for his stupidly exposed throat. A rookie mistake.

By the time he’d let go and dodged the attack, Gavriel had already gotten between them. It was only when the Warrior put his back to the witch, that Fenrys had realized she was not a threat. Gavriel would never put his back to an enemy. He’d shifted back to Fae form and let Gavriel explain who she was.

“I’d be happy to go another round with the dog,” she’d said from behind an iron smile. The wind had caught her hair and blown it every which way as Gavriel had healed her wound.

The fourth time he’d seen her, he’d thought her wild.

She’d been coming to the ship every day at dawn to trade shifts with the other witch, Briar. On that particular day, Asterin had landed on deck just before dawn, and Elide had come to greet her. The witch had taken one look at Elide, one sniff, and had been sent into a blind rage. She’d stalked to where Lorcan watched from the quarter deck and had beaten him senseless. Three blows to the face, three to the stomach, and three to the groin. Lorcan had let the witch. Had told Fenrys and the others not to get involved.

Elide hadn’t stayed to watch. Hadn’t objected either.

The twenty-fifth time he’d seen her, Fenrys had thought Asterin truly beautiful.

She’d brought a healer by the name of Yrene Towers to the ship to see to Aelin’s wounds. He’d moved to the far back of the ship’s deck when Aelin’s shirt had come off, and had been trying to ignore the conversation the four females were having. But he’d failed.

Failed because the witch had started running interference for Aelin. Which had been interesting because Ironteeth witches weren’t known for their kindness.

Around the time he’d scented Aelin’s tears, Asterin had started making jokes about Aedion and had kept the conversation from dying. Then she’d started talking about herself, asking about brands. It was almost… motherly.

He’d been on the ship the day one of Erawan’s Bloodhounds had tried to impersonate him. He’d been the one to pin the beast to the wall with a few arrows when everyone’s (but Dorian’s) magic had failed. It’d started talking about Manon’s second. About the brand on her stomach, the witchling she’d lost.

When Aelin had flat out asked Asterin to show them all the scar on deck that day, his head had whipped to them. A bold, heartless thing to ask–but Asterin hadn’t hesitated. She’d joked that all of them should feast their eyes on her disfigurement, and Fenrys had found himself lost to it. The brand, the scar that Asterin had lived with for a hundred years.

No one had ever looked more beautiful to him than she had in that moment. Stripped bare and vulnerable. Branded by the beast who’d tried to tame her. Own her. He knew those feelings all too well. Maeve had never tried to brand him, but she’d done other things. There were ways to leave your mark on someone that didn’t involve visible scars.

A cage was a cage.

He’d decided right then and there that if he ever had the opportunity to kill the Blackbeak Matron he’d do it, and he’d bring her still-warm heart to Asterin. He’d been disappointed when a few minutes later, Asterin had told them all about a Stygian spider her queen and Adarlan’s king had encountered. Disappointed because she’d told them how Dorian had killed the Blackbeak Matron for what she’d done to Manon. Dorian probably deserved the kill more than he did, but that didn’t mean Fenrys couldn’t be disappointed about it. He’d just have to find another way to attract the blonde-haired witch’s attention. 

The twenty-sixth time he’d seen her, he’d wanted her. That was the first time he’d asked her to take him flying.

 

***

 

No one had ever asked Asterin Blackbeak to take them flying. She’d been skeptical at first and had said no. But Fenrys kept asking. After about a week, she’d agreed.

 

***

  
  


She’d brought the healer to the ship that morning and promised to return before nightfall to take her back to camp. They’d strapped themselves in, and then they were off.

It wasn’t their first time flying together. She’d taken him on a few flights, but this was the first time he hadn’t immediately let go of her waist as soon as the wyvern steadied. They glided around just out of sight, flying in wider and wider circles around the ship. It was a clear day, they could see for miles.

She closed her eyes, listening to the call of the wind, feeling it whip through her hair.

“What do you do up here when it’s just you and the wind?” Fenrys said over the rush of air.

“Exist,” Asterin called back. She looked over her shoulder at him and saw that his eyes were closed–until he felt her looking at him. “You hate the ship don’t you?” 

He nodded.

Asterin supposed he hated anything that kept him bound.

“Your dead queen, what did she do to keep you?”

“She trapped by brother,” Fenrys said. “She had him serve in her bedroom, and when I found out, I did the only thing I could to help him.”

“You tied yourself to her,” Asterin said. Fenrys nodded. “How long?”

“Decades. She fucked me at her beck and call. Humiliated me, dominated me.”

“Then why did you stay?” she asked.

“Why did  _ you _ stay?” he said. She barked a laugh. 

“Sensitive doggy aren’t you?” She leaned down and unstrapped her legs from the saddle clasps. She tapped the wyvern three times on it’s right side–a signal. Then she stood and turned to Fenrys. His eyes were wide. Not in shock, or horror, but something like awe.

“I stayed,” she said, raising her arms and taking a few brazen steps backward, “because my family is the Thirteen. And they are the only family the Goddess has deemed me worthy enough to protect. I do not regret staying.”

She eyed Fenrys then turned on her heel and slid onto the wyvern’s neck. He lurched forward to grab her, but he was strapped into the saddle, and she was too far away. As if on cue, the wyvern began to dive. Fenrys grabbed onto the saddle straps and watched as Asterin leaned back, raised her arms wide and cried out.

It was not a cry of battle, or of happiness, or of defeat. But a cry of freedom. A howl to the sun, sky, wind, and to the world. It was the cry of a woman who’d once been caged and tortured and left to turn into a cruel thing, but who’d fought and bled and returned to life–a truly free thing.

She was not a witch, or Valg, or Fae, or human–she was the wild song of life incarnate, and she was a woman.

And as the wyvern dove closer and closer to the ocean, Fenrys let his awe for her replace his fear of death. He lifted his arms, closed his eyes, and howled to the world as she did.

The wyvern pulled out of the dive and began to climb. A steep climb that had Asterin lying flat on her back, looking down at him, as he pulled himself close into the wyvern to prevent too much drag. Her hands were free hanging just above his head, and her shirt had come untucked, exposing her muscled midriff and bound breasts. Her scent flooded him. She smelt like wildflowers, a crisp autumn breeze, and sea salt. If he reached out, he could touch her hands, grab them, grab her.

He did. 

And when she felt her hands secured in his, she released her legs from where they wrapped around the wyvern’s neck and fell toward Fenrys. His eyes went wide with fear, as he was forced flat on his back–his grip the only thing keeping Asterin from falling. Upside down, he watched her. Watched her dangle behind him in the wind.

_ Wildthing, _ he thought.

“You’re insane,” he yelled at her. She only smiled.

Eventually the wyvern leveled out. Fenrys released one of her hands as she climbed back toward the saddle. She stood and walked over his shoulders then sat down facing him so that her thighs were over top his, their bodies lined up. He could take her right here. He released her hand and gave a low, feral growl. He wrapped his hands around her waist–under her shirt.

She laughed.

“What do you want with me, Fenrys?” she said over the wind.

He glanced at her mouth. A moment passed.

“I don’t know.” And it was the truth. He had no idea what he wanted from her. What he liked about her. What made her so gods-damned attractive to him. He’d always loved women, beautiful things, anything wild… but there was so much more to her, to him and why he was drawn to her.

Asterin studied him. The look on his face. His wild, disobedient, beautiful eyes. The hunger in them. Something in her ached. Something she’d thought long dead. She recoiled from it.

“Don’t fall in love with me, Fenrys,” she said. “You can’t love someone and be free.”

“Why not?” His voice was laced with male arrogance.

She turned around in the saddle. “Love is a cage you lock from the inside. And only when the one you love is gone, do you realize you never had the key.”

_ A prison, _ she thought.  _ That kind of love is a prison. _ And she never wanted to be trapped again.

She knew the mood had shifted as she flew them back to the ship. Knew the feelings, the memories, and the loss that he must be scenting in her blood.

Fenrys was beautiful, she’d give him that. But it had been decades since she’d had any kind of relationship, or friendship with a male. Been decades since she’d even thought about it, really. Some scars ran too deep, were burned too deep, and she was unsure whether she’d ever want another male, human or Fae. The risks seemed too big. But still… 

Somewhere beneath it all, something had stirred in her, tugged at her. Like a knock on a door she’d since long forgotten. Maybe it was Fenrys, or the fact that Manon was very likely pregnant, but… it was something.

As she flew back to the town where Aedion had set up his base of operations, Asterin Blackbeak could feel the shift in the wind. Something was coming.

She just didn’t know what.

 

***

 

When she’d made it back to town that night, Asterin had taken the first man who’d offered, to bed. 

He was young. Early twenties maybe, and brazen enough to risk humiliation in front of his fellow soldiers by asking her to let him buy her a drink. She’d taken one look at him and said she wasn’t interested in drinking with him or his friends. She didn’t want to talk to him. She wanted to fuck. He’d practically shit himself. His friends had, too.

She’d dragged him into one of the abandoned houses on the edge of town and hadn’t bothered to find a bedroom. The entrance rug would do. 

She’d stripped his pants and told him to get on his back. He had. Then she’d removed her pants and sunk her body onto his. 

She didn’t kiss him as she moved on him, finding her pleasure. He tried lifting her shirt and she grabbed his wrists tightly. He kept his hands on her hips after that.

“Oh, ma’am,” he groaned. “You’re beautiful.” She resisted the urge to cut out his tongue.

“Do I look like a ma’am to you?” she said, pausing her movements. Terrified, he softened inside her. 

“Uh, no. No ma– _ miss _ . No, miss. You’re–”

“Shhhh,” she cooed, into his ear. “It’s all right.” He softened still, and she could smell the fear beginning to build in the air. She hated when this happened.

She tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder and gave the young man as sweet and innocent a smile as she could muster, pouting slightly.

“Do I not please you?” she said, looking down at where she knew he could feel himself softening. He immediately began speaking, telling her everything he thought she wanted to hear to keep himself alive. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She grabbed his hands.

“Touch me,” she whispered, sucking one of his fingers into her mouth and then placing both of his hands on her breasts. She ground her hips into his slightly and could feel him begin to stiffen.  _ Thank the gods,  _ she thought. It was too late to find another one, and she wanted to get to bed early. She unbuttoned the top of her shirt and bared one of her breasts for him to touch. She’d taken any binding she might have worn off before she’d made the decision to find a bedmate.

His eyes went wide.

She’d expected this. She had large, heavy breasts, and men, for whatever reason, were fascinated by them. His hand found the exposed breast, and she cooed and moaned to make him feel as if he were doing a good job, while she waited for his hardness to return. He wasn’t terrible. She’d just had better.

She tried not to think about the Fae Warrior. He  _ would  _ be better. He’d had at least a century to practice, maybe more.

When the human was ready again, she moved to find her pleasure. She felt the tension building within her and reached between her legs to stroke the bundle of nerves she knew would be her undoing.

“Oh, miss,” he panted, as her body began to spasm around him. “Oh, gods, you’re tight. So tight.”

Asterin, of course, knew this. It was part of being a witch. There was no part of a man her body wasn’t designed to torture. She smiled and said, “thank you.” 

She thought of the Fae Warrior who’d taken to following her around like a lap dog. He would surely know how to please a female. Know that a good lover never let a female touch herself to find completion in the bedroom. That was a male’s job. 

_ And if he is truly skilled, _ Asterin thought, _ then he’d know how to trigger a woman’s release without using his hands. _ Only once had she ever had a man who knew how to coax her to completion with the skill and stroke of his thrusts. It was a release that came from so deep within a female that few men would ever be skilled enough to trigger it. But if the rumors were true, Fae males came more equipped than human men. Maybe this kind of knowledge was an instinct they were born with.

She pushed the man’s head to the side and held it there so that he couldn’t look at her. She came with thoughts of Fenrys in her mind, and left when it was over. Leaving the human to finish himself.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Scenes in this work tie into/are explained more fully in the other works I have in this series. Mainly "It'd Been Three Weeks" and "The Beloved One"

The war raged against the Anascaul Mountains. They’d lost ground to Erawan’s forces and had been forced to retreat into the snow covered ranges. Winter was a few months away, and if they didn’t reclaim some of the Frozen Wastes soon, then they’d be forced to retreat until spring.

No matter the season, the Anascaul Mountain range was deadly and unforgiving. Lorcan’s legion had made camp in a small valley that was mostly sheltered from the biting wind and brutal ice storms subject to hit no matter the season. But they’d been there for months and their food supplies were running low and any big game animals had been hunted out of the area. If Fenrys was going to find enough food to supplement them until the next ceasefire, he’d have to head out of the mountains. Oakwald was half a day’s flight from where they were, and Lorcan could spare him and the blonde-haired witch for a day or two.

Fenrys found Asterin on the back end of camp, studying the skies from atop her wyvern. Without asking, he hauled himself into the saddle and strapped himself in behind her.

“There’s another storm coming,” she said.

“I know. Lorcan says if we get stuck not to risk flying. To wait it out.” The wyvern took off.

“Any word on the ceasefire? The bodies are piling up,” Asterin called to him. She kept her eyes keyed to the skies for any signs of the enemy, he kept his keyed to the ground below for the same reason.

“Aedion is waiting for the papers to return. It’s supposed to last two weeks.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think winter is on it’s way. And unless we get more wyverns on the western front, these mountains will shut us out until spring. We can’t get supplies in fast enough as it is, the wyverns are spread too thin and they’re too useful on the killing fields to waste on supply runs. Only a matter of time before starvation claims more lives than battle. Aedion’s no fool. He knows these mountains.” They banked left at Asterin’s silent command to the wyvern. Fenrys looked to the skies for something she might be avoiding but saw nothing.

“Do you think he waited this long to propose the ceasefire for that reason? Make it the enemy’s decision to hold till spring?”

“It’s what I’d do,” Fenrys called. They banked left again until they were headed in the wrong direction. “Why are you doubling back?”

“Wyverns are pack animals. They leave a scent trail on the wind from their wings. It’s how they find each other. We use an oil to clog the pores and mask it, usually lasts a few weeks before it needs to be reapplied, but there wasn’t any on the last few supply shipments.” Asterin patted her sky-blue wyvern.

“So that’s how you disappear sometimes,” Fenrys said. Asterin smiled.

“Have you been following me, Fenrys?” He scoffed.

“I don’t chase bedmates, witch. They always find their way to me.”

A lie. If he’d told the truth, then he’d have to explain that he sometimes tracked her scent around the killing fields after a battle, or around camp when he hadn’t seen her or her wyvern in a while. Sometimes he’d follow her scent only for it to just suddenly stop for no reason. Now he knew why.

“We have that in common,” she said.

If it had been anyone else, Fenrys would have challenged the statement. But the witch was beautiful. She was born and bred to be beautiful, a lure of men.

They doubled back a few more times before the incoming storm made it difficult to navigate. They headed for Oakwald and landed just beyond the treeline. The temperature had dropped about twenty degrees and it was getting close to sundown. They’d have to be quick.

The wyvern released the bodies it’d been carrying in it’s claws, and he and Asterin got to work, assembling the pieces in the nearest clearing. It seemed barbaric to use fallen soldiers as bait, but this was war. Anything you could do to attract large enough animals to eat, you used. They scattered the parts around a small area about a quarter mile wide, and then headed into the trees.

Asterin sent the wyvern into the foothills, and the two of them waited. He was huddled in a large tree on one side of the clearing, Asterin on the other. He could make out her shadow from where he was perched. The flecks of gold in her eyes the only thing truly discernible to anything that looked at her without the gift of Fae sight.  _ They glitter,  _ he thought,  _ like something priceless that fell from the sky and snagged on a branch. _

He tore his eyes away from her and focused on the clearing. Once an animal came to feast, he’d shift and attack. If it was too big, or if he needed help, she’d be ready with the arrows. Once they made a kill, she’d summon the wyvern who’d then carry the carcass to a barren cliff in the mountains until they were done.

It began to snow.  _ Great,  _ Fenrys thought.

They’d done this dozens of times, and never had a problem. But they’d never done it in the snow. It was too early in the season for any snow to last, but being this close to the mountains meant anything could happen. He just hoped it wasn’t an ice storm. 

A motion from Asterin’s tree caught his attention. She signaled. One animal. A bear. 

He waited for it to move into the clearing. It did, just below Asterin’s tree. It made it’s way to one of the bodies and Fenrys shifted. Then leapt through the clearing. One minute he was there, the next he’d vanished and reappeared. He was on the animal before it knew he was there. It hit the ground without a fight. Asterin called the wyvern and it took off with the carcass. 

Three more large game animals happened upon their trap, and each left with the wyvern.

Just after midnight, Fenrys decided to call it quits. His magic was waning and the ground, including the bodies, were covered in snow. No more animals would happen by tonight. There was a cabin hidden a few miles up in the mountain cliffs that was only accessible by flight. They’d be safe there for the night. He made his way to Asterin’s tree in wolf form. She leapt down, landing soundlessly beside him. She wasn’t dressed for snow–neither was he, but wolves were built for this kind of weather. He moved in close to her, and took the opportunity to rub his cheek against her hip.

“What a dog,” she said, through chattering teeth. But she reached up and pet him anyways. Reached up–because he was no small, ordinary wolf. His head came to around her ribcage. They trekked through the forest, and Fenrys tried not to think about the riding gloves she wore. They’d do nothing against the cold. Nothing she wore would. They were both dressed for fall, not a gods-damned blizzard.

A branch snapped to their left and echoed off the surrounding tree trunks. They froze.

Immediately they were back to back, scanning the trees. There was no scent, nothing out of place. Just the howling wind and the snow they’d had no choice but to leave their tracks in. They needed to get airborne, now.

Another snap. This time from the opposite direction. They held their positions, only moving their eyes. They waited.

After a silent moment, Fenrys moved his head ever so slightly to catch Asterin’s eye. He jerked his head up once and knew she understood. She stowed the bow over her shoulder and in one graceful leap, she was in the tree above them. A second later, she was concealed and ready to cover him should he need it.

They’d done this before. Not wanting to drain his ability to leap through space, the plan had always been that she’d cover him from above while he investigated. If something should go wrong, or they found himself unable to match whatever enemy appeared, he’d know which tree to leap to–so that he could grab her–and then get them both as far away as he could before his magic ran out.

The one upside to the snow was that, in his wolf form, he blended in well. This was his forest now. He loosed the hold on his magic and felt it seep into his blood. Felt himself slip further into the White Wolf of legend. He let his Fae side ebb away ever so slightly–giving over to the thrum of his magic.

Prey. He could smell it. Feel it. A worthy adversary. Three of them. His Fae senses would not have picked them up so easily, but the Wolf, he could hunt anything. He honed into the killing calm and came up behind the first. A witch, wounded.

Fenrys sunk his fangs into the back of her neck and pulled her from where she’d been standing and into the darkness. With one powerful crunch of his jaws he’d snapped her neck like a twig underfoot. She never had a chance to summon her iron nails. He went back for the others, but they were gone. He let that power roll off him–no, they weren’t gone. They were hiding. Waiting.

He circled back to the tree Asterin was in and everything went to hell. 

 

***

 

Asterin Blackbeak heard the crunch of a neck just as she lost sight of Fenrys.  _ Good, _ she thought. Better to kill something than nothing. 

She waited.

He reappeared a second later, blood on his snow-white maw. The wind howled around them, cold and crisp. It blocked her sense of hearing and whitewashed her sense of smell. She blinked the lenses on her eyes into place. She watched Fenrys stalk closer, and then she felt it. The slight sway of the tree beneath her, in a direction unnatural with the pounding of the wind.

She spun–fast enough to surprise her attacker, but not fast enough to see that the Bloodhound had swept low for her feet. She tried to jump out of the way as her iron nails connected with its throat, but it was too late, she was already falling. 

The last thing she remembered was throwing her arm out to break her fall as the ground raced toward her. Then everything went black.

 

***

 

_ Shit shit shit _

The witch he killed had been a decoy, a distraction from the real objective–Asterin. He made to leap through the folds to catch her when he first saw her falling, but the second Bloodhound sunk its claws into his flanks, jerking him backward. 

He turned with a vicious snarl and sunk his claws and fangs into the beast. Disgusting, black blood filled his mouth. The creature screamed and released him, but not before it dragged one of its claws across his back–slicing through fur and muscle. Two powerful snaps of his jaw later, he’d taken its head clean off and was bounding toward Asterin.

The blonde-haired witch was lying unconscious in the snow, the last Bloodhound desperately trying to haul her into the air–despite the blood shooting from it’s neck. Fenrys leapt through folds and space and matter, and attacked the beast from behind. It screamed and clawed at him–uselessly batting is leathery wings–before he snapped its neck with one thrash of his wolf’s head. It went limp. He tossed its disgusting body into the snow.

He shifted back to his Fae form–spitting black blood–and approached Asterin. Carefully, he ran his hands along her neck and spine–checking for injury the way Gavriel had taught him. When he found none, he rolled her onto her back. Her nose was bloodied, and he’d have to reset the bone jutting against her skin from within her forearm–but she was breathing. 

_ Wildthing,  _ he thought.

He ran a hand down her face. Aside from the blood, she looked almost peaceful.

“You’re going to be all right,” he said.

A stupid thing to say. He knew she couldn’t hear him.

Without the witch, it would be hard to summon the wyvern. They responded to high-pitched and to low and guttural commands. Low and guttural he could do, but anything above a baritone was tricky. 

He pushed the bone of her forearm back into place as best he could. Then ripped the heads of two of their remaining arrows and tore the sleeve off his undershirt to finish the brace. It would have to do. He hauled her up into his arms and set off at a fast pace for the edge of the forest. He’d have better use of his arms–should they be attacked again–if he threw her over his shoulder, but he was no idiot. Throwing anyone unconscious over your shoulder would risk cutting off their air supply and suffocating them. He liked the witch too much to let her die now. Plus, she wasn’t much to carry. She was tiny compared to him, the weightiest part of her had to be those heavy breasts…  

He focused on the forest around them, and on the shield we was projecting to block the wind and snow, and whatever else might be lurking in the forest. When he reached the edge of the treeline he waited a few minutes before he attempted to call the wyvern. It took him three tries to get the pitch right, then the whisper of sky-blue broke through the whitewash of ice and snow, and they were gone.

 

***

 

The cabin was tucked inside a large fissure between two cliffs, high up on one of the mountains. The surrounding landscape was craggy and barren, and too steep for anyone to climb. As long as they weren’t followed, they would be all right to wait out the storm. 

He laid Asterin out on the only cot and pulled it toward the center of the room. He made quick work ensuring the windows were blacked out and that no light would leak through any cracks before he started a fire. When he was done, he assembled the few weapons the safe house offered. It wasn’t much. And worse, there was only one exit–the door situated between two windows on the face of the cabin. They’d be fucked if they were attacked. 

But the wyvern was outside. And it would call out a warning, buying him time to get them out. 

He settled between the witch and the door, weapons in easy reach, and waited.

 

***

 

Everything hurt. Not the most pain she’d ever been in, but pain nonetheless. Her arm was broken, and maybe her nose. A fire crackled beside her. Warm, almost familiar.

She tried moving her toes and fingers and limbs–assessing the damage. Her eyelids fluttered. A figure loomed over her. Everything was blurry, but she thought...she thought…

_ Smooth dark skin, like black porcelain. Pale hazel eyes. Beautifully kept locks, tied back with a forest green band. A kind smile. He smelt of a pine forest, of wood smoke and burnt cinnamon. Of man. He wiped the fever sweat from her brow... _

His lips were moving, but she couldn’t understand him. She tried to reach out, to answer, but he was too far. Darkness swallowed her.

 

***

 

Her lips were wet. She coughed. Spit water. Tasted blood. Again the dark figure above her.

This wasn’t real. Couldn’t be. She tried to sit up. Firm hands stopped her. A warm, deep voice soothed her. Then from the darkness came another voice– _ his _ voice.

_ There was storm, and you fell... I brought you back to my cabin.  _

_ … You’re safe. Your arm is broken, but that’s the worst of it… Your fever broke yesterday, thank the gods…   _

_ My name is…  _

_ … you can stay here as long as you like.  _

Then she heard her voice. Only it wasn’t hers. It was too far away, too distant.

_ Why did you save me? … Who are you?  _

_ … you know what I am, what I can do… Asterin… my name is Asterin…  _

Then she heard his voice again. Only this time he wasn’t looming over her. He was lying next to her, on top of her, under her. He kissed her. They rolled around and tangled in his bed, his sheets. _Your heart is very beautiful,_ he whispered. _You can have all of me,_ he whispered. 

_ I’ve been waiting a long time for you…  _

Then the scene shifted. It was sunny and warm. They were in the forest. He’d shot a wolf.  _ Wolves are pack animals, _ he said. His dark locks knocked against his back as he bent to slit the animal’s throat, and end its misery.  _ Strange for this one to be out here alone. _

_ You were out here alone _ , she said. He smiled.

_ I am not a wolf, _ he said,  _ I chose to be alone. But as strong and proud as a lone wolf might be, it will not survive without companionship.  _ He looked at her.  _ Deadly are the predators who can die from a lonely or broken heart. For there is no magic more powerful, more wild, nor more destructive than love. _

She knelt beside him.  _ And how do you see me? _ she asked.

He hauled the beast over his shoulder and said, _ No man will ever tame your heart, Asterin Blackbeak. But I will give you mine for as long as you’ll have it. _

 

***

 

The last time she’d kissed him was on the front porch of the cabin. His dark skin looked soft in the pale light of morning. His cheek was warm. She’d wanted to leave without a goodbye, thought it’d be too hard to say. It was.

_ I’ll come back, _ she said.

He smiled and folded his strong arms across his muscled chest.  _ I’ll be waiting. _

She mounted her broom and would have missed the words had she not glanced back at him. _ I love you, _ he called. 

By the time her heart had stopped fluttering and her mouth could form words, she was already too far away to say it back. But she knew he’d seen the smile on her face. She knew he already knew how she felt. 

The scene shifted. Darkened. Suddenly it was cold. 

There was no fire here. No warmth. Ice. She was covered in ice and snow. The only warmth from the tears that fell from her eyes. But they, too, froze before they slipped away. Before she slipped away.

She could hear fire. She didn’t know why, but she hated the sound. The crackle, the roar, the burning. Couldn’t remember why she hated its warmth. Feared it.

Panic.

She panicked. It rose in her like acid from her stomach. Then turned to lightning and over and over and over again it shocked her, paralysed her. It roiled in her stomach. She couldn’t breath. Couldn’t get air in. It was too loud. The fire was too loud, too close. 

The smell. Oh gods the smell. Flesh and bone and blood. And flesh. She saw it. Couldn’t unsee it, couldn’t save it. Touch it. Her flesh, his flesh–

_ make it stop make it stop make it stop _

Asterin Blackbeak sunk her iron nails deep into the Fae male and threw him across the room. She was on her feet instantly, snarling and growling.

Panic held her mind as she stalked the unfamiliar room. Turned in place. The fireplace was different. The room was different but– _ no  _ the smell. She’d smelt that smell. Burning flesh. She roared through iron teeth ready to shred the world apart. But–

Her hands shot to her stomach. Nothing.

She looked down.

There was nothing. No bump that would last for months after she was empty. No blood and pus oozed onto her shirt in the shape of a word she hated. No bruises from a beating she had not deserved. No blood. There was no blood from between her legs. 

“Easy,” came a deep, male voice. She whirled to Fenrys.

He stood in the corner of the room, hands raised, ten red splotches bloomed over his shoulders. He took a step toward her. She bared her teeth.

“Easy,” he said, “just breathe.” She watched him inhale through his nose and exhale through his mouth. He took a small step toward her. Hands still out in front of him.

She watched the rise and fall of his chest as he got closer.

_ Gone, _ she thought. _ They’re gone. And I’m still here. Why am I still here? _ She took a step back. Then another.

Air. She needed air.

She took another step and hit the wall. She threw her head back as if she could get more air, but nothing worked. She felt the tears then. Hadn’t known she’d been crying. She clawed at the wall as her legs gave out.

“I,” she gasped, “can’t,”–another gasp–”breathe.” 

Slowly, Fenrys approached. He positioned himself on her side closest to the wall so as not to close off the room.

A sob broke from her throat. She couldn’t get air in. She clawed at her neck and chest, shredding flesh and tunic.

“Stop,” he said, lunging to grab her wrists.

“Can’t breathe,” she panted, “let,”–another pant–”go.” He didn’t. He tried not to crowd her, but it was hard when her back was to the wall, and he had to keep her from turning her throat to ribbons.

“Lie down,” he said.

She wanted to scream at him for the command, for holding her wrists, for being here and witnessing her like this, but the look on his face…

Slowly, she turned her body and laid down on the floor. She kicked away from the wall. He stayed low over he bent knees, and when she looked straight ahead or above her, the room looked bigger, more spacious.

“Close your eyes,” he said. She did.

Very slowly, he began to talk to her. He told her to listen to his voice, to focus on his cadence, to inhale when he inhaled. His voice was deep and soothing and calm. 

He slipped his hands into hers and she held them. Inhaling… and exhaling.

Inhaling… and exhaling.

 

***

 

“Thank you,” she said.

It was the first sound she’d made in hours. They were lying on the floor, side by side. One hand behind his head, the other still holding hers. He glanced at her. She was looking at the ceiling, her neck had been patched.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

A moment passed.

“Where did you learn to do that?”

He took a deep breath and said, “Gavriel taught me.”

“When?”

He wasn’t sure why he answered. He’d never told anyone. “About a month after I came under Maeve’s ownership. It hit me all at once that I would never be free again. That I’d spend the rest of my life on my knees in her bedroom. And I… I’d just started panicking.”

He thought back to that first time. He’d been alone in his room, looking at himself in a mirror. He’d broken it out of anger, and when he went to pick up the shards, he couldn’t. He’d hated his face. The way he looked. The bits and pieces of himself reflecting back in the broken glass.

“For weeks, it only happened when I was alone. I thought I could control it. Beat it. But then one day Gavriel found me. He helped me that time. And then when it kept happening,” he shrugged, “I just started looking for him. He’s the only one who knows.”

He looked over at the fire. It was getting low. He glanced back at her before he got up to throw a few more logs on it. He returned, draping a blanket over her before he laid down in the same position.

He reached out and laced his fingers back in hers, careful of her broken arm.

“Did you ever want to just end it?” she whispered.

He was silent for a moment.

“No,” he said, and it was the truth. “I’m too arrogant for that.” She chuckled. “Did you?” he said. He wasn’t stupid. He knew what she’d been dreaming about. The way her scent had changed so frequently while she’d slept.

“Yes.”

He heard and felt the tears in her voice. He turned on his side, propping himself on an elbow and gently placing his other hand in hers. She blinked, and a few tears fell. Her other hand was laid flat on her stomach.

When he realized she wasn’t going to elaborate he said, “Who is Orion?” She went rigid. “You said his name when you were unconscious.” She pulled her hand from his and rolled onto her side, away from him.  _ Wildthing,  _ he thought. He watched her shoulders jerk and shake and knew he’d said the wrong thing. 

His stupid male arrogance had gotten the better of him. He knew who the male was now. Her body language and scent told him everything. And still he was jealous. Jealous of a gods-damned memory because it would always be perfect. Always be intangible.

_ Even I, _ he thought to himself,  _ can’t compete with a memory. _

He didn’t know how to offer her comfort. How to apologize. Didn’t know if it would even help. He shifted into his wolf form and laid down beside her.

_ Warmth, _ he thought. _ I can offer warmth. _

 

***

 

Aedion had put the Thirteen on supply runs for the duration of the ceasefire. It’d last for two weeks, and he wanted to make sure they utilized the available wyverns to fly in as many supplies from the coast as possible.

Asterin had been on day runs with Vesta, but that morning, Aedion had asked one of them to bring supplies inland to the camp where he and Aelin had sequestered the Lords of Terrassen. No one liked running supplies to the Lords camp. There was too much politics and whining involved.

Asterin had challenged Vesta to an arm-wrestle to see who’d have to go. She’d lost.  _ Should have challenged her to a knife throw,  _ Asterin thought. Vesta was a shit shot. 

Grumbling, Asterin made her way to the warehouses on the edge of town where they’d been storing supplies. Her sky-blue wyvern was already loaded up and waiting–with Fenrys.

She’d talked to him very little since that night in the cabin a few weeks ago. Not because she hadn’t wanted, but because they’d both been busy. The last few times she’d seen him, he’d been in his wolf form.

“Aedion thinks you might need help,” he said, climbing into the saddle behind her.

“You mean he wants a witness,” she said, as the wyvern climbed into the air.

It was no secret that the Lords hated being sequestered– _ or trapped as they called it _ –in a camp with Terrasen’s children and elderly. Aedion had made it clear that it was too dangerous for them to be anywhere else. He was also incredibly protective of the children. He’d used the Lords status, and therefore protection from the war front, as an excuse to make them free babysitters.

When Aelin had finally healed enough to make her grand entrance in Terrasen, the Lords had tried to plead their case with her. She’d not only agreed with Aedion (outright laughing in their faces), but she’d gone a step further and had the worst of the wounded sent to the camp while they recovered. With them went the Crochan witches skilled in the healing arts, and a hand full of the Southern healers too old or ill-equipped to serve on the battlefields. 

She’d said it was good for the Lords to be around the wounded and suffering. “It gives one perspective,” she’d said. But everyone knew she just wanted to constantly remind them of the horrors of war, and that the Lords had enacted laws so that they’d not have to fight.

Asterin was no fool.

She knew that behind Aelin’s arrogant front for the Lords, the queen saw the advantage of the next generation of Terrasen’s children growing up in a camp like this. Witnessing firsthand how content their current leaders were to sit back and let others fight for their country, provide for their safety.  _ Clever, _ she thought.

But even more so was the fact that not only did Aelin do her best to have the children educated, she also made sure that the southern healers, the Crochans, and anyone found to possess skills in magic were put on a teaching rotation with the magically gifted children. The Lords hated it. But they found themselves powerless to stop it, as they were at the mercy of those keeping the camp safe.

Sometimes, Asterin wondered if Aelin would not be above luring the enemy into battle near the Lords camp. Not just to showcase her magical prowess–but to win the hearts and minds of any young eyes that might happen to be watching.

You could kill a woman, deny her a throne, but you could not kill her legend. Symbols were just as dangerous as any weapon in war.

The wind was cool on Asterin’s face as they flew over the forest. The sun felt warm. They’d only get a few more mild days like this, before the fall season would fully settle in.

“Witness, backup–all the same really,” Fenrys said. Asterin snorted, and glanced at him over her shoulder. His dark onyx eyes glittered in the early morning sun. He’d long since removed his hands from her waist. A part of her wished he hadn’t. She ignored that part of her and turned back around.

“Witness or backup for whom?” she said. “For Darrow? Or for me?”

Darrow and the other Lordlings, as Asterin liked to call them, hated witches. The Crochans had grown on them, but only because the Lordlings found them useful, but they were pretty to look at. When any of the Blackbeaks showed up– _ gods forbid with a wyvern _ –the Lordlings didn’t know whether to piss themselves or take a knee and propose. The scent of male fear mixed with arousal, and the shame they felt for that arousal, brought Asterin back to a simpler time.

She smiled to herself.

“For you,” Fenrys said with a deep, male chuckle. “Darrow wants any excuse to kill one of you, the others can’t decide whether they want to fuck you or fight you.”

Asterin laughed, and something in the wind shifted.

 

***

 

It was late afternoon by the time they got to the camp. They landed on its edge and both he and Asterin began untying the cargo from where it’d been strapped to the wyvern. As usual, Darrow was the first one of the Lordlings to greet them.

“These supplies are late,” he said.

“Our deepest apologies for putting the war first,” Asterin said with a lover’s purr.

Fenrys shot her an amused look that said,  _ Easy now. _

She rolled her eyes and ignored him.

“We have women, children, and wounded soldiers all relying on steady shipments. If the people running this war can’t get our supplies on time, then maybe a transfer of power is in order,” Darrow said.

Fenrys handed the Lord a particularly heavy box of supplies and said, “For a man entrusted with the custody of all Terrasen’s children, you seem to waste a lot of brainpower on what other people are doing. Tell me, Darren–”

“It’s Darrow. Lord Da–”

“How are the children in your care?” Fenrys said, ignoring the Lord’s blatant annoyance and stepping ever so slightly into his personal space.

It didn’t take a genius to know that Aedion had been abused in war camps after Terrasen had fallen. Fenrys had seen the way Aedion put the fear of the gods into the Lords and their families. Everyone running and working at this camp answered to the general, so if anything happened to one of Terrasen’s children, Aedion would be the first to know. And Fenrys was pretty sure Aelin wouldn’t bat an eyelash if he redecorate the camp with the severed heads of child molesters.

_ Hell, _ Fenrys thought.  _ I’d help him. _

“The children are fine. No thanks to your late supplies,” Darrow said venomously.

“Good,” said Fenrys, taking another step. “Because, Derrick, the last time Terrasen’s children were left in the care of the Lords, they were sent to fight on battlefields, and left to be preyed upon by sick men and women you called friends.” Fenrys took a too large step into Darrow’s personal space. He dropped his voice to a low, vicious whisper. “I’ve put men down for far less, but it’s never as much fun as when they truly deserve it.” He gave a fanged smiled.

Now it was Asterin’s turn to glare at Fenrys.  _ Down, boy, _ her eyes seemed to say.

He glanced at her,  _ What? He started it. _

_ I know, but he is one of the more useful ones. So play nice. _

Fenrys snorted.  _ You mean the way you intended to play when you wore that tunic, Asterin?  _

She whipped her long blonde hair off her shoulder, tossing him a look that said,  _ I have no idea what you’re talking about,  _ and turned back to unloading supplies.

He’d known what she was up to the moment he’d seen her in that outfit this morning. She wore a child sized tunic, untied at the neck to showcase her dense breasts. It hugged every delectable curve of her body–leaving nothing to the imagination. It ended just around her hips, and the riding pants she wore beneath were entirely too tight to be practical. But he wasn’t going to complain about the view that showed off those glorious hips and her round, muscular ass. 

She was beautiful. And Fenrys loved beautiful things.  _ Wildthing,  _ he thought.

He worked a muscle in his jaw.

Fenrys tore his eyes away from Asterin’s backside and scanned the small group of men now helping to unload supplies. The smell coming off them was disgusting. A mixture of arousal, fear and shame. He almost laughed. Each and every one of the males was either openly drooling at the witch, or unable to stop tripping over themselves as they glanced at her.

Well, everyone except Darrow. He wasn’t the least bit interested in women. And maybe the fact that he wasn’t drooling all over Asterin made Fenrys like the man just a  _ tad  _ more.

When they were done unloading and logging all the supplies, he and Asterin split up to check in with their people around the camp. Every now and then he’d catch a glimpse of blonde hair, or get a whiff of wildflowers, and he’d look over and see her. Black eyes glittering with flecks of gold–a small group of children at her feet, mesmerized by her beauty–and hoping for the candies she was known for handing out.

He spied her among a group of children all watching a teenage girl at a well. The girl was making small butterflies out of water for the amusements of the younger children. Asterin sat on the edge of the well, a small dark skinned little girl in her arms. They watched the butterflies, smiling and laughing.

It was an odd thing to see a witch surround herself with humans. Even more odd that those humans were children. But he knew why. Knew there was an ache that being among them must help to soothe.

He’d never been one for companionship. The most he’d ever wanted from others was praise and recognition. The White Wolf didn’t need friends, just admirers. He supposed that once this war was over, he’d leave. He’d spent enough time around the cadre for a lifetime. He could be on his own now, like before. He longed for those days. The ones before Maeve.

Sometimes he got lost in those memories.

He studied Asterin. How her arms wrapped around the girl in her lap. How she smiled at the children. How they, too, smiled at her. _ Fearless, _ he thought.  _ Children are fearless.   _

His brother was safe, he was free. The life he’d had before Maeve was so close he could almost taste it, touch it… But Aelin.

The queen his heart ached for. Beautiful and wild, but that’s not what drew him to her. She had power. And it had sung to him from the moment she’d been born. He’d felt the shift in the earth, in the darkness between the folds when he leapt through space. No one knew where his power had come from, but twenty years ago he’d leapt into that darkness between worlds and felt it.  _ Her.  _

A wildfire had sparked somewhere in the world, and it’d called to him.

When Maeve had first began talking about her, he’d known exactly who she was. Had felt it in his bones. He didn’t want another cage, another enslavement, another queen… But Aelin was not Maeve. She was the queen his Fae blood longed for. Serving her… There was honor in that. 

_ Protect, serve, cherish, _ he thought. 

Maybe he would not venture so far from Aelin and her court when this war was over. He glanced at Asterin. Maybe he could find more than one reason to stick around.

 

***

 

That night, Asterin and Fenrys settled in a small clearing just outside the walls of the camp. They’d fly back to town in the morning when the sky-blue wyvern was most camouflaged.

A fire burned between them.

He watched her from the other side. She was settled atop her bedroll, leaning against the belly of her wyvern. Arms folded just under her breasts, legs crossed. She reeked of a human man.

She looked at him. The fire danced with the gold in her dark eyes.

_ I’m bored _ , her expression said.

_ How may I be of service?  _ said the look he gave back.

A moment passed. Her eyes flickered over his body. Fenrys raised an eyebrow, smirking from the corner of his mouth. A question and a tease. 

Asterin narrowed her eyes and slightly puckered her lips,  _ I’m thinking. _

He sat back, letting her take in more of him. If it had been warmer, he’d have taken the opportunity to remove his tunic. But either way, he knew how beautiful he looked. She cocked her head to the side.

“The wolf,” she said. “Are you different when it takes over?”  _ Not _ where he’d thought her mind had gone. But the night was young. And it was only going to get colder.

“Sometimes,” he said. “I control the wolf, but if I need to, I let it take more.” He sat forward, placing his elbows on his bent knees. “There are situations the beast is better equipped to handle.”

“Has it ever controlled you?” she asked.

“Nothing controls me,” he said, quickly adding, “not anymore.”

“Are we still talking about the beast?” Fenrys bared his teeth. The witch did the same. “So touchy you Fae males.”

“And what of your beast, Blackbeak? Does it control you?” When she didn’t deign to reply, he pushed again. “I saw you with those children today. They’re fearless.” She threw her head back and laughed.

“Changing the subject, Fenrys?” There was an edge in her voice. “But I’m flattered you’ve been keeping tabs on me.”

“I have not.”

“Really?” She clinked her iron nails. “How about this, since you’re so interested in knowing more about me, and I can’t deny that you are  _ somewhat _ interesting to me, let’s play a game. I ask you a question, and you give me a truthful answer. Then you ask me one and so on and so forth. Get it?”

The old Fenrys would have laughed in her face. At the outright arrogance of her to think that she could get him to reveal his secrets. But–

“Fine,” he said. “You owe me three questions.” She motioned with her hand for him to continue. “Why do you spend so much time with the children when you come to this camp?”

Fenrys wasn’t fucking around. 

She bit the inside of her lip, suddenly interested in picking at her nails.  
“It… soothes me,” she said.

“Is that why you disappeared for half an hour and came back reeking of a human man?”

“So you have been following me, haven’t you?” she said, with a sly smile.

“I’m the one asking the questions. Wait your turn.” He was obviously enjoying this.

“What I do with my freetime is none of your concern,” she said, leaning back against her wyvern. “But I’m flattered you’re so jealous.”

The fire crackled between them.

Fenrys leaned back, splaying his legs in front of him and said, with a lovers laugh, “Such deflection, Asterin Blackbeak. One might think you’re hiding something.”

“I have needs,” she answered. “I don’t know about the Fae, but there is nothing shameful about a witch seeking her pleasure.”

“But you seek pleasure from the weaker human men. The soldiers whose tents you visit are all too young, and too inexperienced to live through this war. They’re already dead.” It was the truth. When he’d tracked her around the killing fields and camp, he’d sometimes end up at a soldier’s tent. They’d all been weak, and young, and not one of them looked fit for battle. She never visited the same tent twice. And nearly all the men she’d been with had not survived.

She cocked her head to the side. “Is that a question, Fenrys?” He gave her a bedroom smile.

“Just an observation. But I’m curious, why would a witch take the weakest human men to bed when she could have her pick of anyone?”

“Don’t you mean why haven’t I taken  _ you _ to bed?” she purred.

“Wait your turn,” he said, glancing at her breasts. She chuckled.

“I won’t sleep with a male or a man if I think I’ll have to see him again,” she said.

“Is that because you think love is a cage?”

“Ah-ah-ah,” she said, wagging a finger. “You’ve asked your three questions. Now it’s my turn.” He rolled his eyes. “How long have you been following me?”

His first instinct was to deny it. But she’d been honest with him, and he was pretty sure she’d know if he lied.

“I haven’t been following you like  _ that _ ,” he said. “I just like to know you haven’t died.”

“Why?”

“It soothes me.” 

And immediately he wished he could take it back. Not because he had used her words to mock her, but because of the truth in those words. The truth her face told him she’d heard. 

“That was two questions,” he said. He thought quickly, anything he could use to hurt her, wound her, bring some color back to her paling face. “When did you want to end it?” 

She stilled.

_ Stupid stupid stupid _

He was so gods-damned stupid.

“Three weeks after I lost Amren.” Her voice was so small. Her eyes dimmed, as if she weren’t fully there with him. “I knew I couldn’t go back. I could never…” she closed her eyes, composing herself.

Fenrys wanted to do something, make it stop. But he had no idea how to offer the kind of comfort she needed. So he did nothing. He sat on the other side of that fire and watched as she pulled her knees up under her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

“I hated myself, my body, everything. I’d never felt more human in all my life. I had nothing left. No hope… I realized that the biggest secret the Matron’s kept from us was that we are each born with a human heart. They train us to ignore it, to see that part of ourselves as an infection, a disease to be cured. But I knew I had a heart because I’d never been so broken, so hopeless.”

Fenrys waited. Waited to ask another question, to process what she’d said, but then she continued.

“There was this one time, after I went back… I’d devoted myself to protecting Manon from her grandmother, and there was this moment, when they’d brought in a young Crochan witch, and ordered Manon to kill her. She’d been beaten and tortured, but through all her bruises–I saw her. Her face. I knew she was Manon’s sister and what would happen if her identity were revealed in front of the covens. There would be no way for me to save Manon–no way to get her out. So I joined them all, and screamed and cheered for Manon to kill her before she could say anything.”

She stared intently at the fire. 

“Before Manon killed her, the girl told us that the Crochan’s biggest secret was that they pitied us.” She looked at Fenrys. “I couldn’t save her. But sometimes I wish there were a way I could’ve thanked her–for not outing Manon, and to tell her… to tell her that not all of us had forgotten our hearts, and that I’d do everything I could to save her sister’s.”

A moment passed. 

Fenrys felt the weight of her burdens like an anvil on his chest.

“I have one more question,” he said, shifting forward and crossing his legs. “I was going to ask how long it’s been since you said her name out loud, but I wasn’t sure… ” he trailed off. She gave him a weak smile, as if there were a memory that did bring her joy.

“I say it aloud to myself sometimes, when I’m alone, or on her birthday–or I suppose what would– _ should _ –have been her birthday,” she bit the inside of her bottom lip, but it did little to hide the trembling there. “But I think the last time I said it in front of someone else was just after I lost her. Sorrel and Vesta found me and brought me to Vesta’s aerie, and I suppose that sometime during the three months I spent there I said it, cried it.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve never told Manon. Not her name, or that I knew the Crochan was her sister.”

Fenrys wished he could go to her. Wished he knew how to comfort. He offered the only thing he could think of to offset the secrets she’d entrusted to him. 

He took a deep breath. Swallowed hard.

“The first time Maeve raped me,” Asterin’s head jerked to him, “I couldn’t… perform.” He picked at the hem of his tunic. “I was naked on her bed, lying on my back, and I’ll never forget the way she looked at me… As if that kind of thing happened all the time. She, uh,” he cleared his throat, “she forced me to look at her and said, ‘Don’t cry, Fenrys. You enjoy this. You  _ want _ to please me.’”

Asterin didn’t know what to do, what to think, but the rage she felt. It was a living, breathing thing. “You. She… you had no choice.” Fenrys shrugged.

“My body just responded to the command.” He looked over at her and cocked his head, scenting her. He smiled coyly, “It’s flattering how you want to defend my honor, Asterin Blackbeak.”

“Fucking. Bitch,” she snarled. “Tell me she died slowly?”

“Is that your question?” If he hadn’t been making light of the horrible truth he’d just told her, she might have played along and rolled her eyes at him. She just stared at him. “Yes,” he said, “she died slowly. We held her down while Aelin made the bitch count how many times she stabbed her.”

“Good.”

“You once asked me why I stayed,” Fenrys said, easing himself back into a casual sitting position. “For my brother, Connall. It’s why I never thought to end it when I was with Maeve. I couldn’t leave him. Not when I knew that Maeve would put him back into her bedroom.”

He snorted.

“What?” Asterin said. He shook his head and looked up at the starry night sky.

“I wasted so much of my life protecting him.”

“Do you resent him?”

“Sometimes. But it was worth it.” He looked back to Asterin. She was casually resting against her wyvern’s belly. “Did you ever resent Manon?”

“No,” she said. “She is my family. The only one I was ever meant to have. When I realized I didn’t want to die, that I was going to live with this human heart, protecting the family I did have became my sole focus. I’ve devoted my life to it.”

“And what about now?” Fenrys said. “Now that she has Dorian, a throne, and a witchling on the way?”

“What about it? I’m not jealous if that’s what you’re implying.” Fenrys heard the truth in her words. “It just means there is more to protect.” A smile caught the corners of her lips. She tried to fight it, but couldn’t. Her face broke into the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen.

“What?” Fenrys said.

“Aunty Asterin has a nice ring to it,” she chuckled, and her eyes filled with the tears. Fenrys saw the hurt. Like a thin piece of gossamer it coated her happiness. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to find a way to make it stop. To take that pain away from her, to bring that smile back.

He stood. He did not know how to comfort.

“There is a sadness in you, Asterin Blackbeak. And I don’t know how to fix it, or if it even can be. But if you’ll let me, tomorrow I’d like to show you how I ease the sadness in me. How I lessen it’s hold on me without forgetting that it was there.”

She nodded. And he shifted into his wolf form and prowled around that fire between them, and laid down next to her.

_ Warmth, _ he thought. _ I can offer warmth. _

 

***

 

They flew out just as dawn broke the next morning. The night had been cold, but Asterin had been warm. She’d woken up against Fenrys’s flanks, the White Wolf had curled himself around her and had slept with his head on her hip.

When they reached the town, they both went to wash up in their rooms. Once bathed, clothed, and fed, they met in the hallway. Fenrys led her upstairs to the third floor and knocked on a door. Rowan answered and let them in.

There was a short stool next to a long, low table, and strewn across it were various tools and inks. At first, Asterin hadn’t known that to think. Then Aelin came out of the bathroom, tucking in her shirt. Her face and chest were completely healed from where she’d been whipped. She paused when she saw Asterin.

“It was only a matter of time,” Aelin said to her. The queen eyed Fenrys, then Asterin, then the too small space between them. Asterin stepped to the side–away from Fenrys. 

“What is all this?” she said. 

“This,” Fenrys said, walking past her and sitting on the low table, “is how some of us move past our pain.” He pulled his tunic and undershirt off. His chest and arms were rippled with muscle after muscle. But that’s not what snagged Asterin’s eyes. Cascading over his shoulders and arms, and across the top of his chest were tattoos.  _ Like armour, _ she thought.

Aelin left, and Rowan sat down in the stool next to the table. Eventually, Asterin felt comfortable enough to sit in a nearby chair. She watched as Rowan hammered ink into the ten tiny scars her claws had left on Fenrys’s shoulders the night she’d awoken in the cabin. It didn’t take long.

When Fenrys was pulling on his shirt and tunic, Rowan looked over at Asterin.

“You don’t have to make a decision now,” he said. “But if you want, when you’re ready, it would be an honor.” He dipped his chin to her.

She looked at Fenrys then back at Rowan. They’d both seen her scar that day on the boat. She’d spent time with Yrene going over her options should she ever want to get rid of it. She knew she never would. 

“What,” she began. “What could you do?”

Rowan shrugged. “Anything you want. I can cover scars or work around them. I can use words to tell a story”–he motioned to his face–”or designs to do the same thing. It can ink a picture or a phrase, it’s whatever you want. Whatever you’re comfortable with.” He paused, then said very thoughtfully, “I can work over brand marks, too. Or around them.”

A part of her wanted to scream at Fenrys for bringing her here. Wanted to drag her claws across his pretty face for being self-important enough to think that he could help her. She saw his hands go up the same way they had in the cabin that night. She reigned in her rage.

“Thank you,” she said to Rowan. “I’ll think about it.” She stood and left.

 

***

 

She’d avoided Fenrys all day, and that night, after she’d made sure her wyvern had been fed and cared for, she found herself prowling the soldiers end of the town. She’d meant to go back to the inn to sleep, but she’d just kept walking, head filled with everything she wanted to forget. She caught Vesta flirting with some of the commanders on the porch of a tavern, and ducked into the closest alley before the witch could wave her over. 

She didn’t want a commander, she wanted some weak man who’d die before he ever got the chance to run into her again, or fall in love. 

Ten minutes later she entered one of the bars known for being frequented by low ranking soldiers and draftees. Two minutes after, she was hauling some scrawny brunette into the closest, darkest alley. She pushed the man against a stone building and began working on his belt. He leaned forward, trying to kiss her. She jerked back and pushed his head to the side with a snarl. She went back to fighting with his damn belt. 

_ Who does Fenrys think he is?  _ she thought. He had no business whatsoever trying to fix her–help her–whatever it was he thought he was doing. She searched for the right clasp that would unlock the man’s belt. He eagerly ran his hands up and down her waist.

_ I’m fine, _ she thought.  _ I survived, survived everything. Amren’s death, Orion’s death, everything that bitch tried to do to me. I’m free now. I got out. I’m still here. Why am I still here? _

“What the fuck is wrong with this gods-damned belt,” she growled. She let go of it and stepped away, cursing viciously. She wanted to hit something, wanted to sink her claws into something and watch it as it died. The man came up behind her, slipping one hand under her shirt and running it over her breasts, he groped between her legs with the other.

She spun around and used her immortal strength to propel him halfway across the alley. He landed with a thud. She stalked toward him, loosing her iron nails and teeth. His death would do. But when she towered over the human it was not her eyes that he recoiled and crawled away from. But something behind her. Something taller. A distant tug within her told her who it was before she’d heard the voice.

“You have three seconds to get the fuck out of here or I will kill you.” 

The human pissed himself as he scrambled to get away.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Asterin snarled, rounding on Fenrys.

“What are  _ you _ doing?” he snarled right back. “Do you know what would happen if you’d killed that bastard?”

“That’s none of your concern,” she said, stepping into his space.

“Yes, it is,” he said.

“No, it’s not.” She felt the anger rise in her like lava, hot and heavy. And right along with it, she could feel those treacherous tears. The kind she knew she’d be powerless to stop. “Out of my way,” she said, pushing Fenrys hard. He didn’t budge. Her anger flared and without thinking she hit him again. Still he didn’t move. She growled in frustration as the first of those tears touched her eyes.

“Why are you out here, Asterin?” he said too calmly, too nicely. She wanted to hurt him.

“Why are you? I don’t need or want you following me around like some stray dog.” She hit him again.

“I’m out here because I was worried about you,” he said, letting her continue to hit him.

“WHY?” she screamed, backing up, not bothering to acknowledge the tears falling down her face. “We’re not friends, Fenrys. Not family. I don’t even like you. Just because we shared sob stories around a campfire doesn’t mean you know me. We’re fighting on the same side of a war, and when it’s over, you’ll leave.”

“With you,” he said, taking a step forward.

“What?”

“I’ll leave with  _ you _ .”

She hated him. Hated everything about him. The way he was standing. The stupid way he was looking at her. The way his stupid blond hair was tied back off his face. She hated the truth she heard in his words. But most of all she hated that he saw her. That he saw the pain beneath the human men. That he saw the caged beast beneath her skin and understood how desperately she needed someone to love and care for her. To let her out. And that he knew he was perfect for her because he would never die and leave her to face eternity alone.

“Fuck you,” she snarled, and made her way around him and out of the alley.

 

***

 

Fenrys knew he shouldn’t have been following her. Knew it was a stupid, stupid thing to do. He’d been watching from the shadows as she’d pulled the human out of the bar and into the first alley she’d found.

He’d almost left. Should have left, but there was an edge to her. Something about her was  _ off, _ and he’d found that every instinct in his body had told him to stay. To wait. So he had. 

And then she’d fractured.

She’d become frustrated by a belt of all things, and her scent had shifted from annoyed and angry to agony. Such unending agony. And he’d known right then why he’d stayed.

Then that bastard had put his hands on her without permission, and Fenrys had snapped. The witch could take care of herself, but his whole body had just moved of its own free will. Then she’d yelled all those horrible things at him and he’d tasted the lies on every word, felt that thing between them. And now…

Now his Wildthing–no, _not_ his Wildthing–was walking away from him, crying and angry and he had no idea how to comfort her. How to make it stop. The only person he’d ever cared about was himself… and Connall.

He needed help.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day, Fenrys found himself volunteering to help nail down the supply house windows on the edge of town. Lorcan and Dorian were on the far side of one of the buildings. He took the opportunity to find an excuse to help Elide.

As soon as he handed her a nail, she stopped and looked at him.

“What do you want, Fenrys?” she said.

“Why do you assume I want something?” She cocked her head and eyed him. “Fine,” he said. “I need help.  _ Advice. _ ”

“Advice?” she said. He rolled his eyes.

“About women.” Elide threw her head back and laughed. And laughed and laughed. Fenrys worked a muscle in his jaw.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “It’s just–could you say that one more time. I’m not sure I heard you.”

He would not. So he said, “Yes, it’s hilarious. Almost as hilarious as you blacking out the first time  _ Lori _ went down on you.”

That got her attention. He smirked. She hated when he brought that up, and when he used the pet name she reserved for Lorcan when they were in bed together.

“Fainted,” she spat. “I fainted.”

“Semantics.” She narrowed her eyes, and for a second, he thought she was going to bash his skull in with the hammer in her hand.

“Ask your questions,” she said, turning back to her work.

He told her everything. Only leaving out specific details about the stories or secrets he and Asterin had shared. When he finished, they were sitting on the edge of the forest, far away from where Dorian or Lorcan might overhear him. 

Elide wasn’t fazed by any of what he’d told her. He wasn’t surprised. She saw things most missed. She also knew Asterin better than anyone else at camp who wasn’t a member of the Thirteen. She was silent for a long time.

“When I was little,” she said, “there was this stray dog that just appeared one day after a really bad snow storm. It was all bloody and thin. It never came close to our house, but I felt bad for it, so I asked my mother if we could leave it food. She said yes. So the next day I left a slab of meat in the middle of the back yard, and waited. The dog appeared, but never went to the meat. Days passed, so I asked my father what to do. He told me that I should leave the meat where I knew the dog would be. So I left the meat on the edge of the forest. I waited, and sure enough, the dog ate the meal.” 

Fenrys caught her looking at Lorcan.

“Every time I left meat after that, I’d set the plate slightly closer to the house. Until one day, I’d trained the dog to come to the back door. Then I started sitting by the window, where he could see me. Then my father and I would sit on the far side of the back porch and watch the dog eat. Then we sat closer and closer until one day we reached out and pet the dog.”

She looked at Fenrys.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that the dog was so used to being on his own that we had to earn his trust by letting him come to us.”

“What happened to the dog?” Fenrys asked. Elide smiled.

“I named him Boots, and he lived with us for three years before he died peacefully in his sleep. He used to sleep in my bed.” Her face went serious again. “Asterin is a force of nature. And she’s been hurt. The Thirteen is her family, her home, but even she knows that one day things will change. I know she’s happy that Manon is pregnant, but I think it also makes her sad. Sad because when this is all over, the war, the baby, things can’t go back to the way they were. Manon is a queen now. She and Dorian are a family, witchling or not. For a long time, Asterin has been devoted to doing what’s best for Manon and the Thirteen. She was willing to die in Manon’s place for saving Dorian. Loyalty is as much her greatest gift as it is her biggest fault.”

Elide took a deep breath.

“When the Thirteen no longer need her to care for them, who will she be?”

“She’ll be the shell of the woman who’d wanted to raise a family with a hunter in the woods,” Fenry said. 

Elide nodded. “She put them first for so many years so that she would never have to face what she’d wanted for her life.”

Fenrys thought he was going to be sick.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Elide continued, “what do you want from her?”

Fenrys was silent for a moment, then said, “For a long time, I thought I wanted to be free of any kind of cage. Any kind of ownership–a lone wolf. But there was a moment with Asterin, that night at the Lordlings camp, when I thought that maybe there was value and purpose to some kinds of ownership. Like the claim one has to call someone their friend, or their family, or their mate… Those aren’t cages where freedom is forfeit, those are privileges one earns from another.”

Fenrys rubbed his hands over his forehead. 

“I used to think I gave up my life for Connall because I needed to protect him. But now, since meeting Asterin, I think–I think I gave up my freedom because we are a pack, and we can’t survive alone. I think… I think there is something in Asterin that calls to that part of me. I knew it the moment we met, felt it somehow. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just there.” He knew he was doing a horrible job explaining himself. He groaned. “Do you remember when you jumped between me and Lorcan in the marshes that day, and I bit you on accident?”

“I’m still trying to forget it,” Elide said.

“I couldn’t stop staring at you. Couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened, why you’d do that–for Lorcan of all males. But it–how I feel about Asterin–it was there that day between you and Lorcan. As if I could see it in the air, or in the space between you both when I’d leapt between the folds. It was tangible.”

Elide gave him a knowing look.

“What?” he said. She shook her head.

“I think,” Elide said quietly, “I think you scare her. I think she sees you and everything you offer, and it makes her want to run. I don’t think she ever dealt with what happened to her hunter or her daughter, or her. Not really. You need to prove to her that you’re not going anywhere. You need to be consistent and remind her that you’re not going to die and leave. That you’re not scared of the beast she carries with her.”

They were silent for a long time.

“Thank you, Elide,” Fenrys said.

 

***

 

He spent the next few hours looking for Asterin. Finally, he found her sitting atop one of the wooden structures that children used to play on when the town had been occupied. He sat down next to her. A moment passed.

“They’re not fearless, you know,” she said. 

“Who?”

“Children. The other day, you said the children around me at the well were fearless. They’re not. They’re honest. They see everything, feel everything, and they don’t ignore it. They don’t fear me because they know they can trust me. That I’d never hurt them.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that they should be scared of you.”

“I know.”

They sat in silence for a minute, watching the wind rustle the trees. Fernys scented her, she smelt normal. A little sad, but normal.

“What do you see, Fenrys, when you look at me?” He focused on the tree tops.

“I see a beautiful, wild thing, who’s clung to her loyalty for so long because it was a lifeline that kept her alive. I see a Warrior who would selflessly lay down her life to protect her family, but one who fears the day her family can’t lay down their lives for her. I see a beast who wants so badly to be free, but who doesn’t know how to get out of the cage she locked herself in. And I see a woman, who doesn’t think she deserves to be loved in the way she so badly craves, so she punishes herself with pathetic human men so that she can feel something.” 

When she didn’t respond he added, “I see a witch who’s so overcome with lust for a devastatingly handsome Fae Warrior that she ignores him for fear that she’ll embarrass herself.”

Asterin snorted. He gave her a look that said,  _ Oh, please. Don’t deny it. _

“What do you want with me, Fenrys?”

“I want you to let me love you,” he said. She blinked and looked away.

“And what if I can’t do that?”

“Then I’ll wait.”

She raised an eyebrow and shot him a look that said,  _ Bullshit. Fenrys–the gods gift to females–waits for no one. _

He gave her a bedroom smile and said, “I’d wait for you, Asterin Blackbeak. Until my dying breath, I’d wait for you. Just because I’ve never met a female who inspired me to do so does not mean I am not capable.”

She looked away from him and began shaking one of her feet where it dangled over the wooden structure next to his.

“Someone once told me that the deadliest predators are the ones that can die from a lonely or broken heart. Because there is no magic more powerful, more wild, nor more destructive than love.” Fenrys nodded his agreement.

“Before Maeve, I used to think that I could survive on my own, that I wanted to live alone…”

“What changed?” Asterin said. He looked her in the eye for far too long.

They sat there in silence until nightfall. They walked back to the inn together.

 

***

 

The next morning, Asterin Blackbeak found herself standing in front of Rowan’s door with Elide. She thought about bringing Sorrel or Vesta, but she wasn’t ready to explain to the Thirteen about whatever was going on between her and Fenrys.

Rowan opened the door and let them in. He sat down on the stool and she sat down next to Elide in the chairs across the table. Asterin tapped her foot.

“Tell me,” Rowan said.

And for the first time in her life, Asterin Blackbeak told the  _ full  _ story of how she’d met Orion, how they’d fallen in love, how she’d planned to give up everything to stay with him and be a family. She told them about her pregnancy and her witchling, and how the happiest day of her life had turned into the worst. She told them how Sorrel and Vesta found her. About how the darkness had suffocated her. Told them how she’d dragged her iron nails down her wrists and that she didn’t regret it until she saw the look on Sorrel’s face when the dark-haired witch had found her.

She told them how she’d never wanted to see that look again, how guilty she’d felt, and how she’d decided to protect the Thirteen then. She told them how she’d fly over the hunter’s house every now and then to check on him, and how her guilt and shame at losing their witchling had eaten her alive. 

She told them of the day she didn’t see him anymore–how she’d known that he had died. She told them that was when she’d started finding men to sleep with, to ease the pain and to punish herself. She told them that none of these men had ever seen the brand, and that she’d never let them see her face when she found her release. She told them how she thought love was a poison, and that for a long time, she saw it as a cage you locked yourself in.

She told them that until recently, she hadn’t spoken her witchlings name out loud to anyone because it hurt to much to share her with others.

And then she told them about Fenrys.

And how she’d just said Amren’s name not even thinking about it. And how much that hurt. Hurt because she’d decided she could trust him with it, and because she knew that meant it was the beginning of her having to let Amren go, and she wasn’t sure how to do that.

When it was over, Asterin laid her body down on the table, held Elide’s hand, and let Rowan ink the story of the only man she’d ever loved, and the perfect, beautiful daughter she would never know across the word UNCLEAN on her lower abdomen.

When it was over, Rowan said, “Why didn’t you get rid of the brand? You could of had Yrene do it that day you showed us on the deck.” She squeezed Elide’s hand.

“The day I gave birth to Amren was the happiest day of my life. It was also the worst. Getting rid of the brand seemed… I don’t want to forget her. It sounds so stupid. I never met her, never saw her face, but getting rid of the brand feels like getting rid of the proof that she ever existed.”

She took a moment to compose herself.

“I have to let her go, but I don’t want to forget her. She was mine. That day was  _ mine _ .”

And to Asterin’s great astonishment, a few tears fell from the Warrior’s eyes.

“That does not sound so stupid, Asterin Blackbeak,” Rowan said. “I can’t begin to imagine what that felt life, but there was a day–a day that was  _ mine _ . A day that I never knew existed until it was already gone.”

“Lyria,” Elide said. Rowan nodded.

“She was pregnant when she died. I found her… It was too late when I got to her. I carry that guilt every day.”

Asterin reached over and laid her palm atop the back of Rowan’s hand. He flipped his wrist and held her hand–really held her hand–for a moment.

“I never named the child I lost. But not a day goes by that I do not think about the future that was stolen from me.”

“Thank you,” Asterin said. He dipped his chin.

 

***

 

Out in the hallway, the White Wolf casually leaned against the far wall. When Elide saw him, she excused herself and left. Asterin took a deep breath and approached him. She eyed the wolf for a moment, then said, “What a mutt,” and walked off.

Fernys followed. He hadn’t missed the small smile she’d tried to hide when she’d seen him.

For the next few days, when he wasn’t busy, the White Wolf followed her. He’d curled up outside her room the first night, then after everyone had gone to bed, she’d opened the door and let him in. He’d prowled right to the bed and had laid himself atop it. She’d only pushed him over a bit and laid down next to him.

This became their nightly routine.

On the third day, she stalked to the bedroom door and motioned for the wolf to follow her. It was early. The sun hadn’t yet risen. Fenrys wasted no time jumping off the bed and finding her side. She led him outside, it was freezing. She made her way through the edge of town toward where they’d been housing the wyverns. She could see Manon and a pissed looking Chaol getting ready to head out on a run.

She found an empty furniture makers shop and ushered Fenrys inside. She closed the door behind them. The wolf prowled to a large, ornate looking chair and lounged atop it.

“Now, now,” she said. “No dogs on the furniture.” She leaned against the shop door. Fenrys shifted into his Fae form.

“Is this better?” he said. Asterin thought he looked like a king holding court.

“What’s your angle in all this?”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“Why do you want to help me?” Fenrys shrugged.

“Because I know what it’s like to sacrifice yourself for your family. To put their wants and needs before your own, and how hard it is to find your way when they no longer need you.”

“You think the Thirteen don’t need me?”

“I think it’s easy to become lost in the memories of what it was like to live before you devoted your life to them. Easy to run from the things you used to want because nothing could ever be as good. Those kinds of memories are as good as fantasy because they don’t have to change. But we do. Things change, and one day soon, you might find yourself as I did once Maeve was dead and Connall was safe.”

“And how exactly did you find yourself, Fenrys?” she said, stepping closer.

“Angry, confused.” He shrugged. “For years, I wanted my old life back, idolized it, used it as fuel to keep me alive. But we can’t go back. Sometimes memories can be a poison.”

“You think I want to go back? You think I’ll get lost when I realize the life I wanted before all this can only ever exist in my head?” He stood and approached her slowly, hands slightly uptilted.

“I think you’ve spent so long taking care of everyone else that you forgot to take care of yourself. But what about you, Asterin? What about what you want? When do you get to protect a family of your own?”

Asterin covered her face with her hands as tears pricked her eyes.

“I told you,” she growled. “I was not meant to have a family of my own.”

“I don’t think you really believe that, Asterin,” Fenrys said, stepping closer.

“Of course I do,” she spat, removing her hands from her face and taking a backward step. “Of course I believe that. I could never have a family after what happened. Could you?” Her eyes were wild. He moved closer.

“Why?”

“Because.” She wanted to hit him again. Push him away from her. Instead she backed up–and hit the wall.

“Because why?” he said again, raising his hands as he approached her.

“YOU KNOW WHY,” she screamed, pushing off the wall to shove him. Too close, he was too close, saw too much. He grabbed her hands, gently.

“Why, Asterin?” She tried to pull away, and when he held her hands she started thrashing. “Why, Asterin?”

“BECAUSE I CAN’T BETRAY THEM.”

And there is was. The beast that held the lock to her cage. The thing she’d spent so long running from. It had not been the Blackbeak Matron, or Amren’s death, nor Orion’s–but the loyalty she still felt for them, and the fear that moving on would somehow dishonor their memory and what they’d meant to her.

She stopped fighting and leaned her forehead into Fenrys’s chest and said, “I want you so badly, but if I say yes to this thing between us, then I feel like I’m betraying them.”

The male did not go stiff, or pull away, or shift into his wolf form. All he did was release her hands and wrap his arms around her. Something in both of them ached at the rightness of his embrace.

“We do not betray the dead by living,” he whispered into her hair. “We honor them by continuing to live when they cannot.” 

And just like that, the truth in his words clicked into place in her head. 

It was as if a door had been unlocked, opened. Asterin brought her arms up and wrapped them around him. She knew then how much she wanted him–wanted this. What they were doing, whatever it was that they were doing.

She pulled back to look up at him. He moved his hands to hold her face, and she did not flinch when he wiped away what was left of her tears.

“You’re going to be all right,” he said. She felt something, like a shift in the wind or in the movement of the earth. That small tug between them. Fenrys’s eyes narrowed for a moment.

His nostrils flared.  _ Wildthing, _ he thought. 

“What?” 

He worked his mouth to hide his grin and said, “Nothing.”

She raised an eyebrow at the curious look on his face. She glanced at his mouth, then realized how close they were. Realized their bodies were pressed against one another. Realized her body–the scent that must be coming off her.

“What a dog,” she said, pulling away, but not removing her hands from his body. He gave her a beautiful, wicked grin.

“It’s not my fault,” he said, making a show of scenting the air between them.

“Oh?” she said, stepping forward and pressing her body against his. “I think it is.”

Fenrys could tell she was being serious, but also playing with him. They both knew this was not the time for _ that _ . Not after what had just happened–but it was as if something held them together. He could not stop himself, and he could tell that she could not either.

“I think this stray dog has run wild for too long. Someone needs to tame you,” she said. Fenrys growled. 

“Really,” he replied, lifting her up to press her back against the wall. She wrapped her legs around his waist. “Because I think you’ve spent so much time with those human males that you wouldn’t know what to do with a real male. I think it is  _ you _ who needs to be tamed.” 

“Oh?” Their mouths were dangerously, dangerously close. As if he noticed, Fenrys pulled her to him so that her head was by his shoulder, his mouth by her ear. But he kept his hands on her thighs, working his fingers into the tender flesh of her. 

She growled.

“ _ Wildthing _ ,” he whispered, grinding himself into her. Then she went rigid, her scent shifted to fear. He immediately pulled away and let her down. “What?” he said. She looked at him, around the room.

“I don’t know. Something's wrong.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” she said. They headed for the door. 

Outside, the wind had picked up. A storm was coming.

 

***

 

Asterin spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon pacing the tables in the tavern on the bottom floor of the inn in which they were all staying. Most of their group was assembled going over plans, but Asterin couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off, something was wrong. Most of the Thirteen were out running supplies and would not be back until early afternoon. But Briar was with her. Briar had come back early and had immediately found Asterin. She, too, had felt that something was wrong.

“Will you quit pacing all ready? You’ll wear a hole in the floor,” Aelin barked from across the room. Aster had turned to growl at the queen, but Fenrys beat her to it.

Aedion turned to Fenrys, then to Asterin, then to his cousin, then back to his food. He sat across from Yrene Towers at a long table. They were eating.

“Maybe it’s just the storm,” he said.

“It’s not the storm,” Asterin snapped, loosing her iron teeth and nails. Aelin lit up the floor around Asterin’s feet. She glared at the queen until she called the fire back.

“It’s not the storm,” Briar said. “We don’t have powers to predict the weather. It’s something else.” She looked at Asterin as if they could figure it out together. Asterin was about to say something when every instinct in her body told her to look out the window. She and Briar both did. Both left that pull. And what they saw had both witches moving before anyone in the room realized what was happening.

A second later, Chaol Westfall kicked open the inn door, holding the limp body of Manon Blackbeak in his arms. She was dripping blood. Covered in it.

“SOMEBODY HELP ME,” he bellowed.

“What happened?” Asterin yelled, practically climbing over the furniture to get to her cousin.

“She started bleeding about an hour ago,” he said. “Been running a fever since this morning. Lost consciousness ten minutes ago.”

Asterin watched as Yrene jumped from her seat and began laying her hands on Manon. As if her touch allowed for her to see through the skin. Everything that happened next was a blur. Asterin lifted Manon from Chaol’s arms, barking orders at Briar to find Dorian, then she ran up the stairs after Yrene.

The next few hours were a haze, and a nightmare.

She hadn’t cried this hard in… a century. When Dorian had arrived, Asterin had been guarding the door to Manon’s room. Manon had told Asterin not to allow anyone in, but Asterin knew that the witchling was dead, knew that Manon very well might be next, and when Dorian had just appeared out of thin air–the same way Fenrys did–the look on his face had broken her heart.

She’d let him in. Would always let him in if it meant keeping Manon safe.

Hours passed. At some point she’d gone downstairs to the assembled Thirteen. They’d discussed the funeral and all that would happen. Fenrys had volunteered to craft and carve a witch casket, so he’d left with Sorrell to go over what it should look like. 

Hours passed.

That storm outside raged.

Eventually, Sorrel had returned and Asterin had ordered the Thirteen to pay their respects to the heir. One by one they did. And one by one they all came back downstairs with tear stained faces until finally it was Asterin’s turn.

She entered Manon and Dorian’s room and marched to Manon’s side of the bed. She tried to ignore how sad they both looked. Tried to ignore the witchling she knew was bundled in a Crochan red blanket in Manon’s arms. 

She stood at attention. Then bowed deeply to her queen. She took a knee and placed her right fist over her heart. She bowed her head again.

“On my life and honor,” Asterin said, “I will protect, serve, and cherish the heir. In this life and after the Darkness claims me.”

Then Asterin stood, saluted and began marching toward the door.

“Wait,” Manon said. Asterin stopped and turned. “Would you like to hold her?” 

The whole world went silent. A silence so loud it was deafening. Asterin’s whole body began to shake, and she tried and tried and failed to get it under control. She felt her face crumble. Felt every mask she’d ever tried to wear crumble away.

She carefully walked back to Manon’s side of the bed and took a knee.

“It would be,” her voice broke, “my greatest honor.” Manon began to cry, and Asterin was grateful that Dorian was there to comfort her. Grateful that her cousin did not have to face this nightmare alone. She took a deep breath, trying to still the quaking in her soul, as Manon passed the heir that would never be into Asterin’s waiting arms.

A sob broke from Asterin’s throat. From her soul. The bundle was so light in her arms, the weight of the seventeen week old heir so unlike anything she’d ever felt in her arms. She held the witchling close to her heart, and was powerless to stop the flood of emotions that broke through the dam she’d erected to hide them in her human heart.

She’d never gotten to hold her witchling. Had never gotten to see her face, nor learn her scent, nor know the weight of her child in her arms. 

She felt Manon’s arms come around her, felt Dorian’s hand on her shoulder as the three of them cried and cried and cried for all that they’d lost. And somewhere in the pain and the sorrow, Asterin Blackbeak realized that love was not a cage you locked from the inside, or a prison that you’d never escape. 

Love was a freedom.

A freedom with the power to destroy–and to heal. A freedom that offered the greatest rewards to those who kept trying, to those who offered love, who shared it, even on their darkest days when all hope seemed lost. It was those days, Asterin realized, when the true power of love could be seen and felt and heard.

_ This,  _ Astein thought,  _ moments like this are why we keep trying. Why we keep living, loving.  _

And she knew in that moment that the appeal of the White Wolf was more than just lust or want or self deprecation. It was something more, something that had fought for her attention every day since they’d met. 

_ Like my human heart,  _ she thought.

Asterin wasn’t sure how long they’d all cried, or when they’d all sat back up, but she remembered the moment she decided to share her broken, human heart with her cousin and the king. Remembered because she kissed her niece on the forehead and said, “Find my hunter and my Amren in the Darkness. They will take care of you until we arrive.”

 

***

 

For the past few hours, Fenrys felt as though he were slowly going crazy. He’d carved the casket, paced the floor, skipped dinner, and paced some more.

“Are you and Asterin, like, a thing?” Ansel said from across the table he was currently pacing next to. Aelin threw a peanut at her. It hit her forehead with a thunk.

“I don’t think we’re not supposed to talk about it,” Aelin said.

“I don’t see why now,” said Elide from beside Aelin. “All the other topics are too depressing.”

“So,” Ansel said. Fenrys glared at her.

“It sure smells like they’re a  _ thing _ ,” Lorcan said from beside Elide. Fenrys whirled with a growl. He was done with this. Done with them. He grabbed the nearest chair and vanished–reappearing on the second floor landing. He saw Asterin sitting on the floor at the end of the hall, guarding Manon and Dorian’s room.

She looked listless and limp. Her shoulders sunk too far forward.

“I thought you’d be more comfortable up off the floor,” he said, setting the chair by the door. She raised an eyebrow at him.

Fenrys tried not to fidget.

“Thank you,” she said. He motioned his head to the door.

“Will they be all right?” he asked. Asterin shrugged.

“They’ll never be all right,” she said. “But the pain will get easier with distance and time. Until one day when they find out they can talk about it without crying.” 

He wondered how long it’d taken her to be able to talk about her lost witchling without crying. He glanced to where he knew that brand was beneath her tunic. The scar he knew Rowan had tattooed. The scar that made him want to resurrect the Blackbeak Matron just so he could murder the bitch again.

Asterin ran a hand over her lower abdomen, looked at Fenrys and said, “They have each other, which is a luxury I did not have.” He felt the rage in him spike along with his instinct to protect. All signs pointed to them being mates, and the thought of someone holding her down after she’d nearly bled to death in childbirth had his magic thrashing against his skin–trying to get free. He needed to do something. Touch her, hug her, whatever the fuck would rid the scent of sorrow from her blood. He decided on the truth. He could offer the truth.

He took a step toward her, flaring his nostrils. Then another. 

They were maybe a foot apart.

“When I saw that brand on you,” Fenrys said, “I decided that if I ever saw the Blackbeak Matron, I’d rip out her heart and bring it you. I was disappointed when you told us on the deck that day that Dorian and Manon had already ended her when they fought the Stygian spider.”

She cocked her head, exposing the side of her neck closest to him. A motion that Fenrys noticed immediately. Her scent changed as his words hit home.

“Why would you trouble yourself?” she said.

“Because you are a wild thing, Asterin Blackbeak.” His eyes roved over her body, her exposed neck, her lips, then finally back to her eyes. “And it is fools who think they can brand and tame the wild things. That they can own us.” She tilted her head back ever so slightly and Fenrys did not hesitate.

He closed the space between them and dragged his nose up the delicate column of her neck, drinking her in. She smelt like wildflowers and sea salt and crisp autumn air.

When he reached her jaw, he moved back down and ghosted his lips over her delicate collarbone. He inhaled through his mouth and could almost taste her on his tongue. He imagined she might taste like a summer storm, like woman, like raw, untamable magic. 

Her skin shivered under his breath. Her arousal awoke a new and Fenrys drank in the smell like a fine wine. He needed her to feel him the way he felt her–the way whatever she was tugged and called to whatever he was.

He let his hot breath ghost over her skin. Call to the parts of her he wanted to awaken.

“We,” he said, pressing a kiss to the base of her neck. Electricity shot through him where his lips met her skin. It threatened his control. “Are not so different.” Another kiss, slightly higher. “You are wild and wicked and cruel,” another kiss, “and you went back to the bitch who tried to break your will for the sake of your cousin.” His magic begged him to take the witch right there, to prove to her that he would never leave her, that her wild heart had called to his before time and space existed. 

_ Gods-dammit, _ he couldn’t control himself. He had to get her in his mouth.

Fernys dragged the tip of his tongue up the rest of Asterin’s neck and over the bottom tip of her earlobe. She tasted like the wild song of the world, like woman, and like a devastating summer storm.

“I went back to a similar bitch for the sake of my brother. And she spent the last hundred or so years trying to break me, tame me, make me a good, obedient little beasty. But that’s the problem with beasts like us– _ the wild things _ –the harder they try to dominate us, the wilder we become.”

The witch growled and claimed his mouth. Her lips were soft and hot and desperate. He felt that bond between them snap into place with carnal accuracy, his body hardened immediately. But her scent hadn’t changed enough. He knew she hadn’t felt it yet. He could wait.

For her, he would wait.

Wait until she knew she belonged to him and no other. Wait until she knew that he was hers and that they would have many witchlings because Fenrys had no intention of  _ ever _ taking his hands off her. Of ever letting her spend a night away from him and all the things he intended to do to her.

Down the hallway, someone ascend the staircase.

They broke from one another, lips swollen, hands aching to keep touching. Fenrys could smell the liquid heat of her where it pooled in her undergarments. He wanted so badly to get his hands in it, his mouth.

She sat down in the chair he’d brought her, just as Gavriel stepped onto the landing. 

_ I wish he’d get the fuck out of here _ , Fenrys’s face seemed to say.

_ I wish I were sitting on your face and not this chair, _ said the look Asterin flashed him.

_ You’re a cruel and heartless beast, Asterin Blackbeak. _

_You have no idea,_ her face seemed to say, as she took a too long look at his cock.

_ I’m going to get my hands on you, and when I do, I’ll show you what a male does to tame his female. _ It was a promise.

Asterin almost snorted at the look he’d just given her. But instead shot back a look that seemed to say, _I dare you._

At the other end of the hall, Gavriel groaned before turning to find his bedroom.

 

***

 

One week after the funeral, Fenrys found himself on a run with Asterin. It was the first time they’d been alone and far away from any prying eyes and ears. They were flying to the coast to meet up with one of the supply ships. Fenrys couldn’t help himself. As soon as he’d seen her in the long, fur-lined tunic and thick woolen hose, he’d known what was about to happen. 

When they were high enough in the air, he pressed his body to hers so that she could feel the hardness of him. He tightened his hold on her waist, waiting for her to respond. 

So easily. So easily he could bend her forward, lift her tunic, and bury himself inside her.

He tugged on that bond between them. Nipped at the tender flesh of her neck.

She inhaled sharply then reached down and unclasped her legs from the saddle. She spun around and positioned herself so that her thighs were over top his. He growled at the look on her face.

“I don’t want to wait,” she said. “I’ve spent too much time waiting, being scared. If we die in this war, I don’t want it to be without knowing what could have been.” Asterin Blackbeak crushed her mouth to his.

Her kiss was violence and chaos and so gods-damned sweet Fenrys thought he could have died from it. He pushed the front of her tunic up and ran his hands up her thighs, over her hose and the garters that held them, until his fingers found the thin cotton of her undergarments. She tugged on the buttons and belt that kept his trousers closed until she’d freed the length of him. He pulled one of his hands from between her legs and made a show of licking three of his fingers. Then he thrust that hand back between her legs and dipped those saliva slicked digits between her legs. 

He growled–he’d had no reason to wet his fingers. The witch was already drenched. She was warm and wet and throbbing–practically  _ begging _ to be filled.

He bit her bottom lip just as her hands circled his hardness. They were slender and cold and skilled as she stroked him to bring out his full length.

 

***

 

When Asterin Blackbeak had seen the male lick his fingers, she’d whimpered. Then he’d dipped them inside her, and her mind was chaos and nothing all at the same time. She’d reveled in the sensation, of knowing she was being touched, of  _ letting _ someone touch her.

She looked him in the eye and they watched one another as his fingers gently ghosted over her most sensitive part. His gaze was intense and wanting and consuming as he watched her react to him. She knew he couldn’t see what he was doing, that he was relying on his sense of touch and her face to tell him where to go and what to do next. Her fur-lined tunic sat bunched between their bodies–blocking even her view of where she was holding him.

It had been decades since anyone had touched her like this. Since she’d allowed anyone to put their hands between her legs–to find what she liked. 

A moment passed between them. The whole world reduced to the feel of his fingers and the look in his eyes. A second later, she remembered she had him in her hand.

She stroked and tugged and pulled him. He thickened.

She dripped.  
His hands tugged her undergarments to the side. She moved immediately–pulling herself up with an arm around his neck, then sinking herself down. Her hand brushed against the quiver of arrows slung across his back. She fought the sharp pang of panic that told her this was a bad idea, that he, too, was a hunter, that he would one day die and leave her. She pushed it down and leaned into him. 

She let him guide himself to her.

“You’re going to be all right, Asterin,” he said, right before he lined them up and–

_ Oh shit shit shit shit shit _

He was like a too thick rod of warm steel between her legs, and she would not be able to get him in on the first try. She backed off with a frustrated groan. She wanted him–all of him–now. She lowered herself again. She got him in a little deeper. She eaned her forehead into his shoulder, gripped that same shoulder with one hand and wrapped the other behind his neck. She moaned at the pressure–the stretch–she felt between her legs. 

Fenrys growled at how tight the witch was. He knew her body was designed for torture but this– _ this _ was madness. He was too thick, she was too tight how would his ever work–

_ Oh fuck,  _ he thought as the wetness of her seemed to suck him in as she sunk herself again. He pressed her hips down on him slightly. She nipped his neck and groaned, locking her legs up behind him to brace her heels on the saddle so that she could push herself up better.

The next time she slipped down Fenrys bucked his hips–he was fully seated inside her. She winced, then groaned, as pain became pleasure, and she got the first real taste of how thick he was, at how full she felt. He dug his hands into the generous muscles of her backside and watched as she threw her head back and moaned. He nipped at her neck with his fangs. There was literally nothing else her body was capable of doing. He filled her like nothing and no one ever had, ever could, ever would.

Fenrys gave her a satisfied smile. He fisted his hand in her braid and pushed her mouth to his. Her lips were slow to respond and he could see the lust addling her eyes.  _ She’s drunk, _ he thought.  _ She’s drunk off me. _

“Wildthing,” he whispered into her mouth. She blinked, and slowly he could see her returning to the present moment. 

“Fen–” Asterin couldn’t talk, couldn’t think, she was nothing but feeling as her body moved up and down on him, as he helped lift and push her on him, as she rode him. He was unlike anything she’d ever felt. She tightened her hold on his shoulder and neck and found his mouth again. She kissed him, he kissed her. Each motion, each touch–gentle, slow, passionate. So unlike all the other times she’d taken bedmates since Orion’s death. So unlike all the other times she’d fucked a male and… this was more, so much more. 

Fenrys was gentle and kind and giving, and he was not moving her to find his release or to take what he could get from her. He was loving her. Making love to her–letting her make love to him.

She hummed from deep in her throat.

“Oh Fen–oh fuck,” she gasped. Too soon, she was going to come too soon.  _ Fuck _ he was big. So fucking big inside her. She moved her body faster, pulling him in close to her chest so that her face was hidden over his shoulder–so that his body was pressed to hers.

“Come for me, Wildthing,” he whispered as her inner muscles spasmed around his cock, as she worked to tighten her hold on that cock, to squeeze it, as she pulled her body up, then sunk it low. When she felt herself begin to break, she clung to him as if she’d never let him go again–because she knew she never would, would never be able to. She sunk her iron teeth into the meat of his muscled shoulder to stifle her screams.

And scream she did.

Louder than anything he’d ever heard as her release barrelled through her like a tornado through a plain. Fenrys felt her tighten around him–as if she could get any tighter–the wetness of her release coated him anew as she came on him. Fernys reveled in the feel of it slicking him, warming him. He drank in the smell of it, of her. He wrapped his arms around the witch.  _ His _ witch.

Asterin felt her body begin to go limp, to tremble with whatever that was, to begin to relax and enjoy the aftermath, but there was that tug between them and it told her to keep moving, keep going, to love him, to hold him, to belong to him–

She leaned back.

“What  _ is _ that?” she said, still trembling. She knew he could feel it, too. Fenrys kissed her gently as he nudged his still solid cock inside her. He pulled on that golden chain between them.

“That,” he said, “is a mating bond. You, Asterin Blackbeak, belong to me.” He smoothed the many hairs that had escaped her braid back off her face and kissed her forehead. It was useless as they were in flight and she sat with her back facing the direction the wyvern flew–but he wanted to do it anyway. 

She blinked several times, a somewhat shook her head. He growled and twitched his cock inside her and said, “Stop denying it and let me show you how a Fae male tames his mate,  _ Wildthing _ .” She would do no such thing. 

Everything went black. 

The world swirled around them, and Asterin was powerless to do anything but hold onto Fenrys as they disappeared from her wyvern, from the world.

A second later, they appeared on the ground, her back pressed into the frost covered grass in the middle of the forest. Fenrys threw up a shield to block everything but the bright morning sun. It shone upon them, bathing them in warmth and light.

Fenrys pulled out and thrust into her, hard and full. She forgot everything–the world, her name. He pinned her arms over her head and rocked into her again.

“I want to see you,” he said. He held both her wrists with one hand, freeing his other to bring it to the first of the clasps on her tunic. “I want to see all of you.” He undid the top button of her tunic, then waited–as if for permission.

“I’ll do it. I want to do it,” she managed to say, trying not to think about how he was still inside her, how her whole body screamed at the rightness of him inside her.

He released her hands and braced himself on either side of her head. She began undoing the buttons of her tunic–all the way down. When she was finished, he helped her sit up and slide her arms out. Then she reached down and pulled her long undershirt up and over her head.

Fenrys’s eyes remained locked on hers as he began untying the binding on her breasts. She felt them sink down as the last of the cloth was removed. Fenrys was still inside her. She sat in his lap in nothing but her woolen hose, the garter belt that held them, and her undergarments.

She leaned back and eased herself off him, eased him out of her, watching the length of him emerge. She swallowed hard at the sight of him–thick and smooth and glistening with her. 

When she finally removed herself from atop him, the loss of contact was excruciating. The presence of his absence unlike anything she’d ever felt–but, but she needed to get her undergarments off. Needed him to see her naked, needed to let herself be bare to him. She’d known what he was for weeks now, and she was sick of fighting it. Sick of finding pathetic humans to punish herself with because she’d felt she had not deserved to be loved. Deserved a mate. Deserved him.

Using her hands, she held herself steady and lifted her hips in the air. Fenrys took the hint and hooked his thumbs into the sides of her cotton undergarments and pulled them down her legs and free.

Asterin scooted back slightly and laid her body down before him. Legs slightly spread, knees bent. Finally, Fenrys took his eyes from hers.

He slid them down to her mouth, her neck, her two large breasts–so heavy they’d rolled to opposite sides of her chest–her navel, her hips, her scar–

He stared at the beautiful tattoo Rowan had inked over it. Frozen, as he read the story. Then he got to the part about the White Wolf–

“You knew,” he whispered in disbelief, running his fingertips over the beautiful, mangled mound of her skin where his name had been inked. His touch was gentle and loving and… and that was all it took. The bond between them snapped into place for her like a compass needle pointing home. It shook them both like an earthquake, and all they could do to weather it was to wrap themselves around one another and hold on.

“You knew,” was all Fenrys could say as he covered Asterin’s naked body with his clothed one.

“I suspected,” Asterin said through her tears. “The morning Elide and I went to see Rowan, I asked her what it was like.” Fenrys leaned back and Asterin wiped the tears from his face. 

“For how long?” he said, pressing a kiss to each of her cheeks.

“When I knew you were following me around the war camp,” she said with a laugh. “It was so… fussy of you. So Fae. I tried to ignore it, but it only got worse.”

“ _ Wildthing _ ,” he whispered like a prayer. He kissed her again and again and again. 

“When did you know?” Asterin said. Fenrys thought for a moment. 

“I think I knew the moment I saw you beating the shit out of Lorcan on deck that day. Or the day you showed us your scar, and I’d wanted to murder the Matron. Or maybe when you woke up in that cabin and threw me against the wall. But I was certain that night in the alley. When that man–” Fenrys had to stop and compose himself. The thought of the man who’d assaulted Asterin that night made his blood boil. He’d already had the human assigned to Lorcan’s legion so that he could take his time making the man’s life a living hell–

“Stop,” Asterin said, seeing and scenting the rage coming off Fenrys. “Whatever you’re thinking about right now, stop. Just calm dow–”

“Don’t,” Fenrys said. The anger in his eyes suddenly replaced by fear–fear of her. “Please,” he swallowed thickly. He leaned his forehead against her shoulder. “Don’t tell me how to feel–not in this moment. Please, you don’t know what it’s like to lose that control. For someone to take it from you.”

Asterin’s heart sank as she realized what she’d done– _ who _ –she’d sounded like. Maeve had forced him into her bed and had commanded him to enjoy his time there. She felt her heart break. But then she had a thought.

She lifted his head from her shoulder and cocked her head.

“No,” she said. She gave him a wicked, iron grin, and unclasped the quiver of arrows from his back. “You’re my mate,” she pushed him back onto the grass, “and I will tell you how to feel. And right now, you’re going to feel good.” She saw the Fae instincts in him respond to the challenge. Saw those instinct override whatever trauma her words had originally dredged up. She ripped his tunic open and carefully ran her iron nails over his chest. “You know why?” she said.

“Why?” His eyes were wild, crazed with want.

“Because I’m going to suck you off. And Fenrys,” she said, bringing her iron teeth to his ear and whispering in the voice she reserved for her most pleasurable kills. “My. Entire. Body. Is designed to torture. And it’s been a long, long time since I had anyone in my mouth.” She nipped at his ear with those iron teeth and drew blood. She licked and sucked it clean. “It is fools who think they can tame the wild things… but what about a witch?”

Fenrys hadn’t moved. Not when she’d gotten him on his back. Not when she’d ripped his tunic. Not even when she’d dragged those heavy, glorious breasts up his torso so that she could bite the shit out of his ear lobe. No, he’d stayed still and let her have her fun. But then she’d quoted him–as if she’d thought she would tame him.

Not a chance in Hellas.

Fenrys sat up on his elbows and watched as the witch kissed the tip of him, then opened to take him in her mouth. Her lips were hot and wet, and the suction was unlike anything he’d ever felt in all his life. Like she could suck out his very soul, his very essence, through his cock. 

His head fell back as he groaned. Her iron teeth were devastatingly gentle as she dragged them up and down and across his length and head. She worked him with both hands, too. One on his shaft, the other squeezing and rolling the delicate orbs of him.

_ Fuck, _ he liked to watch her like this, liked to feel her like this. But he was done being tamed. Done being anyone’s play thing. He would have his way with the witch. She just didn’t know it yet.

He let the pleasure of her mouth roll through him like hurricane waves. Breaking and crashing against him. When felt himself approaching that golden edge, he fisted a hand in her hair and moved her to keep pace with his wants and needs. At first, she’d only looked at him, but as he began to fuck her mouth, he saw the challenge in her eyes. She wanted to bring him to release, but valued the power in doing it her way. 

She narrowed her eyes on him–

Fenrys vanished.

A millisecond later he appeared behind Asterin, grabbed those glorious hips, and buried himself deep inside her. She collapses onto her elbows with a scream at the first thrust of him. The sight of her hips in the air and of the garter belt still holding up her stockings almost undid him.

“That,” Fenrys said, slowly pulling himself back, then thrusting in hard and deep again, “was lovely.” He reached forward and untied the braid from her hair. “But, Wildthing, I’ve spent the last century lying on my back while a female did whatever she wanted to me,” he fisted his hand tightly in her hair and pulled her head around to look at him. 

He gave her a savage grin. 

“I’m done with that. Besides, you’ve spent that time pleasuring yourself on the pricks of human men. I think  _ you _ are the one that needs taming”–he gave her a hard, powerful thrust that had stars clouding her vision–“Wildthing. I think you are the one who needs reminding of the pleasures an equal can bring–of the taming. And I am just the beast to do it.”

“Yes, please,” was all Asterin could think to say. She was nothing but feeling as she watched Fenrys rock his chiseled, muscular hips with each thrust into her. Too long–too long she’d spent pleasuring herself, punishing herself with unskilled men. Fenrys was thick and hot and deep inside her– _ so fucking deep _ –and all she wanted to do was get lost in it. In him.

“Yes, please,” she whispered again. A deliciously vicious, male smile bloomed across Fenrys’s unspeakably beautiful face.

“What was that, Wildthing?” he said, pulling out slowly. She groaned closing her eyes. She would have buried her face in her forearms had Fenrys not still been holding her hair–holding her head up so that she faced him. “Eyes on me.”

She immediately responded to the command, immediately felt the liquid heat of her pooling between her legs. Knew Fenrys felt it, too. She saw the pause on his face, the flash of thoughtfulness that crossed his eyes. Saw the love there, too. That she would yield this power over her body to him. That she was acknowledging that it’d been too long since someone pleasured her–since she’d  _ allowed  _ someone to pleasure her. That she wanted this as much as he wanted her. A family. Asterin wanted a family, someone to take care of her and he was it. 

_ Mine,  _ she thought.  _ He is mine. _

“Make me yours, Fenrys,” Asterin said, licking and biting her bottom lip as she stared into his eyes. “I am yours to tame, to command”–she squeezed her inner muscles around him, sucking him in more–”and you’re mine. My mate.”

And the words on her lips, the claiming and the finality of them, brought a wave of emotion Asterin had not expected. She fought the tears that threatened. Fenrys saw. Fernys knew what it’d meant for her to say those words. He released his hold on her hair and pulled her body up to his.

“I have been waiting for you for a long time, Asterin Blackbeak,” he whispered into her ear as he wrapped his arms around her torso and pressed her back into his front. He kissed her shoulder. “You are beautiful and wild and untamable, and my heart is yours to keep for as long as you’ll have it.” He leaned to the side and used a finger to pull her chin so that she was looking back at him. “And I promise to serve and protect and cherish your heart until long after the Darkness has claimed us both.”

His lips were devastatingly gentle on hers. She tasted her tears on them. He slid a hand down and rubbed tiny circles over the brand on her lower abdomen.

“Your heart,” he said. “Has loved and lost a great many things. And those things are sacred. Sacred to you–as they are now to me.” Fenrys did not miss the way Asterin’s eyes darted to the quiver of arrows. He felt sick and stupid for bringing them. For not thinking about how they might remind her of the hunter she’d loved. The hunter she’d lost. He tightened his hold on her.

“I will never leave you, Asterin. I will never ask you to leave the ones you’ve loved and lost behind. They are as much a part of you as I am now. I only ask that you move forward with me. Let me show you all that I offer, all that I want to give you.”

Asterin kissed his lips and said, “I am not crying because I wish you were someone else, Fenrys. I’m crying because I realize now that everything that happened led me here. To you.” She kissed him again, and tightened her hold over his arms. “I’m crying because I had long since given up on the things I wanted, but after everything that’s happened with Manon and Dorian and with you… I realize that I still want those things. That I still want to live my life for me. I want to be loved, I deserve to be loved. And I want a family of my own”–Fenrys growled possessively, tightening his hold on his mate–“with you. I want a family with you.” Fenrys twitched his cock inside her.

“Marry me, Asterin,” he said. “I want to make you my family in every way possible. Nothing could ever make me happier than that. Than having you for eternity. Having a child– _ children _ –with you.” He pulled out of her slightly, then pushed back in. Asterin moaned. “We’ve both lived too much of our lives for other people. Marry me,” he said, “and let’s start living for us.”

“Yes,” was all Asterin could whisper, then moan, as Fenrys began to slowly and deeply take her from behind. She leaned her head back onto his muscled shoulder, he kissed and nipped at her neck. His hands found her heavy breasts. He gathered them in his hands, molding and lifting and pressing them up and against her. His fingers and thumbs found her nipples, and he gently rolled them and pulled them and squeezed them.

“These,” he said, “have been driving me crazy for months.” She tilted her head and opened her eyes. She saw him looking over her shoulder and down at her breasts as he worked them and jostled them in his hands. Mesmerized.

He rocked into her slowly still, but when he saw her looking at him, he said, “When was the last time you let anyone kiss your breasts, Wildthing?” She whimpered. He smiled and vanished. Appearing immediately in front of her. She jumped slightly, but his lips on hers made everything better. She let him lay her out on the grass and clothes and helped him remove his trousers. Then she watched as he lowered himself to her chest.

He licked at the tip of one of her breasts. Massaging each gently still. Then he sucked the sensitive peak into his mouth and rolled his lips and tongue over it. Asterin moaned.

“Decades,” she breathed. “It’s been decades.” Fenrys smiled. He’d figured as much. Figured she’d only let her bedmates see pieces of her from beneath and between clothes. Figured she’d probably been too ashamed.

He worked and sucked and massaged her breasts. He loved the way they looked in his hands. The soft, bouncy flesh of them, the way the fat of them pushed between his fingers when he grabbed and squeezed. Loved the way they jiggled–wondered what they’d feel like around his cock.

_ I am going to go mad, _ Fenrys thought.  _ This female, her body, is going to drive me mad. _

“Wildthing,” he said. She looked down at him through her lashes. “When was the last time anyone kissed the place between your legs?” Asterin moaned and dropped her head back to the ground, closing her eyes. It was all the answer he needed.

Fenrys moved himself down her body–kissing and licking her skin as he went. When he got to her brand, he kissed and touched every inch of it. She would never be unclean to him–would always be perfect and beautiful and whole. 

“I could die from loving you,” he whispered into her flesh. Fisting her hands in his long, blond hair was the only answer Asterin was conscious enough to give. He chuckled as she used his hair like reins and directed him to where she wanted him to go. “So demanding,” he said.

“Please,” she whispered, gently bucking her hips up and grazing the tiny mound of her curls against his chin. He gave her a wicked smile.

“Such manners, Wildthing.” He sat back on his heels and cupped his hands beneath her knees. “Look at me,” he said. She did. Fenrys held his mate’s eyes as he slowly spread her legs. He pushed her knees up and back and when he removed his eyes from hers so that he could gaze between her legs–

“Wildthing,” he said in a quiet, gentle voice. Asterin was looking away from him. Her hands held between her legs to cover herself. He smelt the embarrassment, the shame, that permeated her arousal. “Wildthing,” he said again, releasing her legs from his hold. He bent forward and kissed the inside of one of her knees, over the stocking. Then he moved further down, placing another kiss closer to her skin, her core.

“You’ve nothing to be ashamed of,” he whispered between kisses. “I am”–another kiss–“not a random bedmate”–another kiss–“I am your mate. You have tasted me, had me in your mouth”–he kissed the top of one of her hands–“now let me taste you.” He kissed the top of her other hand and then gently slipped his fingers beneath her hands, pressing the tips of their fingers together. “You deserve to be loved, Asterin. Let me love you, Wildthing.”

Asterin looked at Fenrys and found him looking at her. She swallowed hard and nodded her head. She let him gently lift her hands. He squeezed them and laid them on her stomach. She closed her eyes before she could see him look between her spread legs. 

He stroked a knuckle along her slit. Then back up, then down. She felt the heat of his breath and the ghost of a lick as his tongue came into contact with the tiny bud between her legs.

“Asterin,” he purred. She looked at him through bedroom eyes. Her breath caught at the hungry look on his face. At the satisfaction and pleasure it promised. She felt the liquid heat of her pool and spill. Fenrys’s nostrils flared as he looked up at her. 

His mouth was open, his breath hot, breathing heavy. Her own breathing grew erratic. She stared down at him from between the mounds of her breasts. The sight of his face between her bend knees, the sight of his slightly opened mouth and all that it promised.

_ I could come from the sight of him, _ she thought.  _ Of the sight of my mate like this. _

“Asterin,” Fenrys continued. She watched–and felt–as his tongue grazed the most sensitive flesh of her. She bit her lip. “You’re very swollen.” She whimpered. His eyes bore into hers.  _ He looks like a wolf, _ she thought.  _ Like a wolf stalking its prey. _

“People think that males are the only ones who get erections,” he said. She watched as he settled himself comfortably between her legs and then used his hands to hold open the outer lips of her. “But females get them, too. This”–he licked her now exposed, swollen bundle of nerves–“beautiful bud”–another lick–“swells when females get aroused. Most men ignore it”–another lick–“but I am no man.” He sucked that swollen bud into his mouth like a person would a grape or strawberry.

Asterin cried out her pleasure as she felt her mate’s mouth close around her most tender flesh. Cried out as he sucked her and licked her and massaged her with his lips. He kissed and laved that sensitive bundle of nerves like he would her mouth, and when he inserted two fingers into the liquid heat of her, she came on his face, in his mouth. She writhed and gasped and moaned and thrust her hips to meet his ministrations as he worked her though her release. 

When it was over, Fenrys crawled back up her body and removed her hands from where they’d been covering her face. He kissed away the tears and sobs of pleasure that still lingered in her voice and body. She felt his lips on her brow, his nose grazing her skin, his hands caressing her cheeks. She opened her eyes and moved her mouth to his.

He kissed her gently, reassuringly. Gods, she wanted this, wanted him. But for some stupid reason she felt unsure, embarrassed. She’d not meant to cover her face when he’d made her come, but she couldn’t help it. Some part of her wasn’t ready for him to see her like that–undone and vulnerable and writhing from the pleasure of his touch. It’d been so long since anyone had seen her come apart, and she wasn’t sure how to do it again. How to let that control go.

“I want to see you,” he said. “I want to see the face my mate makes when I make her come. I want you to see my face when I come for you.”

“I’m sorry.” Fenrys barked a laugh.

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” he said, settling over her and wrapping her knees around his waist. The hardness of him grazed the spot between her legs that ached to be filled. He rubbed himself against her. “Asterin,” he moaned.

She grabbed his cock and pressed the thick head between her legs, and said, “Yes, please.”

He thrust his swollen length back into her. Her body enveloped him–tight and hot and throbbing. He braced his arms around her head and savored the feel of her around him, beneath him. He groaned as he rocked into her. Slow and deep, and slow and deep.

He kissed her lips. Knew what she needed. That she’d spent the last century going hard and fast and had never spent the time to savor the act–had likely never wanted to. But here, with him, he watched as she joined him, savored every moment as her body matched his thrust for thrust. How she, too, moved to deepen the place they were connected. 

And it occurred to Fenrys that maybe she was not looking for just sex with her mate, but to feel that deep release that a female could only get when she had a deep connection to someone. When she trusted that person completely, when she let that person find and coax her deeped parts for enough time that she came undone it. Came undone from within.

Only once had Fenrys made a female come from the stroke and skill of his trust and not from the teasing of his hands. It had been with one of his first lovers, a Warrior he’d fought alongside and had cared for in his own way–until she’d found her mate and they’d gone separate ways. But Asterin was his mate. That deep connection was already built in. All he’d have to do was–

Asterin groaned as Fernys slowed slightly to gently press himself deeper within her. She felt the slight tinge of pain that mixed with such a deep thrust. But that’s what she wanted. What she’d never been able to get with human men. She groaned and locked her legs around him so that he could push himself deeper within her.

“Wildthing,” he said. She looked at him. “I want to watch you come. Want you to trust me enough to let me see you come.” Asterin nodded.

“I do. I just–” she groaned as he leaned back and lifting her right leg over his right shoulder. The position changed the angle and depth of his gentle thrust. She liked the sight of him like this. Tangled in her legs. “It’s been a long time.” She groaned again.

“Do you trust me?” he said.

“Completely.” And the truth of her words hit her like an arrow to the heart. She did trust him. She trusted him with her broken heart, with Amren’s name, with the hopes and dreams she still held for her future, and… and she trusted him with this. With her and her body and the moments that they would share as they loved one another and grew their family. She looked at Fenrys and knew he’d seen and heard the truth in her words, in her face.

“Let go,” he said. And she did.

Faster and slightly harder, Fenrys moved within Asterin. She matched him thrust for thrust and focused on the feel of him inside her, on the depth of their connection. He moaned above and around her as her body tightened around him, as they changed positions and tangled in one another to find that spot, that release, within her that only a skilled and trusted lover could find.

It felt as if hours had gone by, but still neither tired, neither stopped looking. And then–

Asterin dug her iron nails into Fenry’s shoulders.

“Is that good?” he said, “Do you think you can come from that?” Asterin could only moan and nod as she held him to her. Both her legs were bent over his shoulders, her breasts mashed beneath her knees. Gods, she looked beautiful to him. Perfect and sexy and beautiful and–her body clamped around him tighter than he knew it could.

“Oh fuck,” he said. “Wildthing, if you keep doing that I’m gonna–”

“I’m coming,” she screamed, howled. “Oh gods oh gods oh Fen oh gods.” Fenrys smiled and leaned forward to kiss her. It was sloppy and desperate and addled with drunk lust–she was beautiful like this.

_ Oh fuck oh gods oh fuck oh Fenrys–my mate _

“My mate,” she gasped in pleasure. “My mate. Oh fuck my mate’s inside me you’re inside me you’re my mate and you’re inside me.”

Asterin thought she was going to break. It was too much. The feeling, the pleasure, the thickness and length of his cock inside her. This release was unlike any she’d ever had. It was building from inside her, not from the sensitive bundle of nerves that sat outside her. This–this was a release she’d only ever been able to achieve when she’d been with Orion, when she’d been in love.

She felt her body quake and contract around Fenrys. She loved him. Fuck she loved him.

“Come inside me, Fenrys,” she sobbed as her pleasure exploded through her. Fenrys growled and rocked his hips slightly faster and deeper. “Oh please,” she begged. “Come inside me. Make me yours.”

“Wildthing,” he groaned as her body tightened around his cock, as her body began to milk him of what he offered spill into her. “When was the last time anyone came inside you?”

A lust addled question, maybe, but he wanted to know. Wanted to know how rare or common this was. Some Fae instinct roared to know just how many had been allowed to claim her like this, to fully spill into her like this.

“Just one.”

And he knew who it’d been. Knew why she’d allowed him to come inside her, knew why she’d never let another after. Male satisfaction woke in him anew. She was his. His mate. No one else would ever get to do this to her, would ever get to possess her like this, fill her like he intended to. He would come inside her, claim her as his in every way, and maybe, if they were lucky, she would one day carry his witchling.

“I’m going to come inside you, Wildthing,” Fenrys said with a bedroom voice. “I’m already inside you,” he varied his thrusts slightly and watched her come undone further. “Moving inside you, that’s me, Wildthing. When I come inside you–oh fuck–my mate you’re my mate and I’m inside you I’m going to come inside you.”

“Oh fuck oh Fen Fen Fen,” Asterin half moaned, half screamed, as her release barreled through her like a tornado. She dug her iron nails into his back to latch him in place while she came. She knew it must hurt, knew it would ruin his tattoos and leave scars–but she couldn’t think enough to care.

Fenrys groaned and panted and thrust and gently kissed her as he made love to her. As he felt her come on his cock.

“Look at you,” he whispered. She opened her eyes when she felt his hands on her face. “You’re beautiful when you come.” He groaned, shuddered above her. “When you come for me for your mate–oh fuck–you’re coming for me I’m making you come my mate my mate my mate.” She held her eyes open, stared at him while she panted and moaned and screamed his name while she came. She did not feel silly, or ashamed, or vulnerable–she was his and he was hers and this was what lovers did. What mates did. They trusted one another with these moments, with their broken hearts, and with their love.

_ Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck _

Hot, thick, sticky heat filled her belly–warmed her insides. She was not just showing Fenrys the face she made when she came–he was showing her his. And she thought it was the most beautiful, wild thing she had ever seen.

“Mine,” he groaned as his pleasure peaked and he felt himself spill inside her. “You’re mine. My family. My– _ Oh fuck, Wildthing. _ ”

The inside of the witch’s body felt as if it had clamped onto his. So tight it closed around him, convulsing and throbbing and contracting. It was torture. Sweet pleasurous torture. Unlike anything he had ever felt, as if it were designed to kill males like this, designed to milk him of every last bit of seed he might offer to produce a witchling. 

_ Fuck, _ he liked the sound of that. Liked the thought of her belly swollen with his child, liked the thought if her relying on him to do simple things for her–like putting on her shoes, helping her onto her wyvern, making her sweets and cakes to satisfy her cravings. But mostly he liked the thought of her being his family. Of waking up next to her for the rest of eternity. Of loving her until time stopped existing.

Fenrys gently laid his body down atop hers. They were both panting and sweating and still desperately clinging to one another. Asterin was the first to move. She retracted her iron nails from him and reached up to wipe Fenrys’s sweat slicked hair off his face.

He leaned back as much as he could in his current state, and smiled at her. Kissed her. She smiled at him and kissed him back.

“I think I could die from this,” she whispered. “From you, from this.” Fenrys wiped the hair and sweat from her face and nodded his agreement.

“I love you, Asterin Blackbeak. And I meant what I said. I want to marry you. I want you to be my wife. Bear my children–if you’re ready. And only if you want to.” Fenrys kept caressing her face with his hands. Somehow unable to stop touching her. He needed to keep touching her.

“Thank you,” she said. “For loving me, for not giving up on me, and for being patient with me. Yes, I’ll marry you. Yes, I’ll be your wife. Yes, I want to have a family with you–want to  _ try _ to have a family with you–but children may not be something I can give you.”

Fenrys saw the hesitation there, the fear. So he said, “I would not think less of you, or resent you if we never had children, Wildthing. I would only love you, and I’d be happy that I’d selfishly get to spend the rest of eternity having you all to myself.” He felt himself begin to harden inside her.

She smiled and kissed him. “I’ll try not to scratch you this time,” she said.

“Don’t bother,” Fenrys said, pulling of Asterin’s legs up and around his waist. “I want you to leave your mark on me. You know, so all the other females who want me know I’m taken.”

Asterin barked a laugh and kissed her mate again. They rolled to the side and Fenrys let Asterin make love to him in the crisp morning chilled grass.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm PropShopHannah on Tumblr.


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